At the bottom of the drawing of Henriette, with arm uplifted as about to lay brush to canvas, and of himself in the pose which Helen had arranged, was scrawled, "Seventeenth cousins." Both Henriette and Phil flushed, and Helen looked from one face to the other lingeringly, keenly. She had caught the grace and charm of her sister as something inviting, vivid and finished as art itself, and the note of the man was of a downright simplicity of clear profile which seemed to see nothing except the face before him. "You think it bad!" said Helen. "It is--it is! But I warned you that I can't do anything but put the person as I see him into line." In the resulting impulse, which had a certain desperation about it, she grasped the edge of the cardboard in both hands to tear it in two. "No!" said Henriette peremptorily. "I never liked anything you have done better." "But I'm used to tearing up things when they displease me!" persisted Helen stubbornly. "At least, wait!" remonstrated Phil. "It is wonderful of Henriette." "And of you, cousin!" said Henriette. Phil took the picture from Helen's hands, which now released it in the relaxation of philosophical disinterestedness. What he saw was a man in love with a woman at an easel, and the man was himself. The truth hit him fairly between the eyes. "Sometimes I don't know what comes out in my own pictures till I look at them a second time--and this is not so bad for me. Have it if you want it," Helen added, as she bent to pick up her drawing materials, "and I'll go and wash my smudgy hands." Rather hurriedly, as if some one or something were pursuing her, she went toward the house. In a quandary Phil watched her out of sight. When he turned again to Henriette her back was toward him and she was taking her canvas off the easel. How like was her figure to the one which had disappeared under the trees! "Helen has a distinct gift, hasn't she?" Henriette remarked. "Yes, and a distinct character," Phil replied thoughtfully. "A touch of melancholy. Even mother and I never know what she will do next." He folded the easel and took it under one arm, carrying Helen's charcoal under the other, while Henriette carried the portrait, and they started slowly back to the house. "It was wonderful what you said about America," she said, looking at him with appealing seriousness. "Why?" he asked. "It was a breath of the real America," she answered. "I've fallen into the provincial French view. America is to-morrow! I like that. You've made me feel the call of America; aroused the dormant American corpuscles in my blood," she continued, gazing thoughtfully at the path and then up at him. "I want to go to America. I'd like to see those Rocky Mountains and I'd like to pay a return visit from Mervaux to Longfield." "You would? But you'd find it quiet--little to do." "Is there much to do at Mervaux? Shouldn't I have my painting? My American corpuscles would make me feel at home."