"I was doing them to make myself laugh," she said soberly, turning her head. He caught a gleam from her eyes baffling in its brightness, as a sharp sunbeam through a lattice. "If they make other people laugh, so much to the good in war time." "Which means that I may have them?" "Yes. But I have yet to make my charcoal of you; so back to your pose, please. This is a serious business." He recognised that it was by the unattractive way that she drew down her lips as she ceased smiling. A serious business! Though he did not look at her, he could feel her presence; the intensity that she put into her work. He could hear the "Oh, cusses!" muttered under her breath, which were only interjections in the course of series of questions and comments, jumping from Longfield and back again. He found himself interested in answering. He betrayed his enthusiasms, his ambitions, and his love for his country, which was as simple and as inherent as that of the peasants in the fields for their France. "America is to-morrow!" he said. This voice of the girl unseen had transformed him from the atmosphere of cartoons to that of a fine reality. He was speaking better than he knew and answering Helen's questions to the enchanting face of Henriette who, in her rapt listening while her brush was still, urged him on no less by her smile and charm than Helen with her voice of emotion. "America is to-morrow!" repeated Helen. "I like that thought. You take in all who come to give them a chance for your to-morrow; amalgamate the prejudices that made this war. You live for the rising rather than the setting sun and you love your country not in a boasting way, but in the blood. Is that it?" "Yes, it's in the blood after all these generations; and we want to breed it into the blood of every newcomer." "Even the Germans--the Huns?" "They should cease to be Germans in America in the same way that my ancestors gave up their European allegiance and fought in order that the newcomers should be free from it. If they prefer to be German, let them stay in Germany." The afternoon wore on as under a spell wrought unconsciously for him with the beauty of Henriette before him and a certain magnetic force at his elbow--which suddenly snapped as Helen said: "I don't know--probably I'll never do it any better! Thank you!" By this he understood that the drawing was finished. He rose as one will when the end of an incident impels physical release. "Enough for to-day!" said Henriette, a touch of sharpness in her voice as she rose, too. Helen looked exhausted and numb. She had put all her vitality into a sheet of cardboard. "You, too, Henriette!" exclaimed Phil, as he looked at the result.