Had she courage? Could she bear standing by his bedside and looking at his bandaged face? She must! Her part became clear. Her cousin and friend had been maimed; she pitied him; suffering should go with her grief for him in a way that would engage the sympathy of all. What were they saying at Lady Truckleford's at this minute? Their opinion had come to mean much to her. They knew only that she had put her hands to her eyes and screamed and staggered out of doors. Was not this the natural result of such a shock? And the next? It would be to inquire about him. Starting back to the ward, a new horror presented itself on the way. All her life she might be known as the woman who was waiting for a man, who returned to her a blind, deaf wreck. He would exist, haunting her memory, invading her beautiful world with a mutilating hand. If only--she shuddered at the thought which easily became familiar in an era when the quick became the dead as a matter of course out where the guns were firing. Perhaps he was already gone. She gasped and halted as she found the possibility hastening her steps. The man for whom she had waited, though they had not really been engaged as she kept reminding herself, would have fallen in action and the slate would be clean. She was at the door of the ward and heard her voice asking a nurse how he was. "He's transferred to Dr. Smith. There's been an operation. I've not heard the result," replied the nurse coldly; for a woman finds it as easy to speak coldly to another woman who is beautiful as a man finds it difficult. "And my sister?" asked Henrietta. "She went across with the stretcher." As Henriette made a turn in the path which brought her in sight of the Oral Surgery sign, Helen was passing under it and coming toward her. She was pale and faint with exhaustion from the strain which had ended with that final tax on her strength, as she put all she had into the message of optimism which she had written on Phil's arm. So near had she been to him, so bound up with him in thought and feeling, that coming suddenly face to face with Henriette affected her strangely. She had a tightening in her throat and Henriette a stifling constraint along with her suspense. After a silence, Helen was the first to speak. "He stood the operation well," she said. "And he will live--live?" Henriette asked, her breath catching on the words. Helen remembered now how her sister had put her hands over her eyes and screamed. Afterwards she had not thought of Henriette, only of him. It had been too horrible for Henriette to bear. Henriette loved him and he loved her, and her eyes to Helen's revealed her suffering in the past two hours. Now she had come back as one in a dream, afraid to ask how he was. "Yes, he will live, Henriette--oh, how awful it has been for you! His body is as good as ever. He will live and make the fight. He has promised--such a hard fight!"