Sometimes when they were working together and Helen was moved to lift the curtain shyly and let him look at her heart, he held his breath before the revelation of the strange, transparent whiteness of her thoughts. That was the vision before which the greatest of the poets had prostrated themselves. And yet the best that had been done by the greatest of them was only a faint shimmer from the distant shrine. He understood now how Blake, all his life-long, had been shaken when he thought of children, “Thousands of little boys and girls, raising their innocent hands.” Through all the leaping, furious, prophetic power of Blake, there ran, like a sun-flooded stream, this passion of loving reverence for little girls and boys. And under his quaintly formal rhymed words, how Wordsworth’s deep heart had melted into the same beatitude, “... that I almost received her heart into my own.” “Into my own!” Helen’s father knew now how literally a man could feel that about a little girl. And yet this did not mean that he thought Helen was perfect. No, poor child, with her too flexible mind, her too sensitive nerves, her lack of power and courage, Helen needed all the help she could get if she were not to be totally undone by life. He knew a thing or two about how ruthless life is to any one who lacks power and courage! Helen must learn how to stand up to things and not lie down and give up. He would find ways to teach her ... yes, he knew wincingly what sarcastic people would ask, “How could he teach her what he had never learned himself?” But the fact that he had never learned himself was the very reason for his understanding the dire need for it. Perhaps it might come from athletics. She must learn to play on a team, how to take rough, careless, good-natured knocks, and return them and pass on her way. As soon as he could get about on crutches, somehow--perhaps he would go to the physical-training teacher at school and have a talk about Helen. Perhaps he could get up an outdoor basket-ball team of the children here on the street. He had plans, all sorts of plans. Above all, Helen must go to college. It wasn’t so much, going to college; he had no illusions about it. For a strong personality like Stephen’s it might very well not be worth while. But for a bookish, sensitive, complicated nature like Helen’s, the more her intelligence was shaped and pointed and sharpened and straightened out, the better. She would need it all to cope with herself. She was not one for whom action, any action provided it were violent enough, would suffice. Would it for Henry? How about Henry, anyhow? How everybody always left Henry out! That was because there wasn’t anything unusual about the nice little boy. He was a nice little boy, and if he grew to his full stature, he would be a nice man, a good citizen, a good husband. No leader of men, but a faithful common soldier--well, perhaps a sergeant--in the great army of humanity.