And Henriette! Oh, he had been hard hit that day. It was enough for any woman to be as beautiful as she was! But how little he realised her worth then! Her beauty had dimmed her other qualities. She was all of Helen and Henriette, too... That glorious courage of Henriette in face of the shells! The woman who had waited had not been afraid. When she had only to raise her finger to bring the strong and the well to pay her court, her loyalty had not faltered when he was too horrible to remain alive. If he had not been wounded he would never have known her true worth... How had such luck come to him? Silence, you pain devils! It had--it had! The messages of her sturdy determination that had fortified him and of the nonsense that cheers which she had written on his arm were recalled. Now he was imagining the touch of her fingers on his arm writing good news. Any minute he might feel her hand-clasp announcing her return. For he had no idea of time; her comings and goings set his calendar. This Henriette made the other seem only a doll. She said that he would get well. He should. It was too good a world for his sight not to come back in order that he might feed it on the beautiful vision of her--now that suffering had taught him how to appreciate her. "You are very eerie this afternoon," whispered the Fiend General Commanding, beaten down to a grumbling complaint. "If we could only stop you from thinking of her we'd soon have you." "You never will!" Phil replied. "She has the measure of such imps of hell as you." And he slept. CHAPTER XXXII LIGHT Either Helen or Phil had given the eye expert the name of Mr. Eyes and the ear expert that of Mr. Ears, which these great men who had honourific alphabetical court trains to their names did not mind. As guardian of the nerve which enables us to know whether the tenor is in good voice or not and to tell the notes of the lark from those of the nightingale or, what was more important in the latest European operations, the cough of the _soixante-quinze_ from the rattle of a machine-gun, Mr. Ears was champion of silence in the hospital, which might have been as noisy as a boiler factory without disturbing Phil. The ambulances ran softly up to the door; the nurses spoke low; they did not rattle the dishes when they brought food from the diet kitchens. After Phil's nurse had placed his tray in front of him preparatory to feeding him, she was called to the other end of the room for something, when she heard a crash behind her. She turned to see broken glass and crockery scattered on the floor. Extraordinary! This had never happened before to him. As she bent over to wipe up the small delta of milk she saw Phil's foot wiggling energetically, demanding his pad--a rare request unless he knew that Helen was present. "Did it make a noise?" he asked. "Of course, and an awful mess!" she replied. "How did it happen?" "Experiment!" he wrote.