'
I smoothed his hair tenderly, noticing how heavily flecked it was with
grey and how it silvered at the temples. Poor Henry, he reminded me
just then of _L'homme a la cervelle d'or_, a fantastic story of
Daudet's, where he tells of a man possessed of a brain of gold which he
tore out, atom by atom, to buy gifts for the woman he loved until, in
the end (she being an extravagant type), he was left without a scrap of
brain to call his own and so expired. The man was, of course, supposed
to be a writer, and the brain of gold his ideas. It made me feel quite
uneasy to think that Henry, too, might be, metaphorically speaking,
steadily divesting himself of brain day by day in order to support The
Kid and me in comfort.
'I ought not to grumble,' he said at last. 'Very few people can do
what they want to in this world. Take you, my dear, for instance. You
are not following your natural bent when you write those articles for
the Woman's Page.'
'I should hope not--I loathe 'em,' I said viciously.
'There's one thing about it,' he went on musingly, 'we'll see that The
Kid has every chance when she grows up.'
We are looking forward very much to the time when The Kid will be grown
up. Henry says he pictures her moving silently about the house, tall,
graceful, helpful, smoothing his brow when he is wearied, keeping his
papers in order, correcting his proofs and doing all his typing for
him.
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