The Amazing Interlude .......................................................................................................................................1

Mary Roberts Rinehart .............................................................................................................................1

The stage on which we play our little dramas of life and love has for most of us but one setting. It is furnished

out with approximately the same things. Characters come, move about and make their final exits through

longfamiliar doors. And the back drop remains approximately the same from beginning to end. Palace or

So Sara Lee Kennedy had a back drop that had every appearance of permanency. The great Scene Painter

apparently intended that there should be no change of set for her. Sara Lee herself certainly expected none.

But now and then amazing things are done on this great stage of ours: lights go down; the back drop, which

had given the illusion of solidity, reveals itself transparent. A sort of fairyland transformation takes place.

Beyond the once solid wall strange figures move on a new mise en scene, with the old blotted out in

darkness. The lady, whom we left knitting by the fire, becomes a fairy Sara Lee became a fairy, of a sort

and meets the prince. Adventure, too; and love, of course. And then the lights go out, and it is the same old

The early days of the great war saw Sara Lee playing her part in the setting of a city in Pennsylvania. An ugly

city, but a wealthy one. It is only fair to Sara Lee to say that she shared in neither quality. She was far from

ugly, and very, very far from rich. She had started her part with a full stage, to carry on the figure, but one by

one they had gone away into the wings and had not come back. At nineteen she was alone knitting by the fire,

with no idea whatever that the back drop was of painted net, and that beyond it, waiting for its moment, was

the forest of adventure. A strange forest, too one that Sara Lee would not have recognised as a forest. And a

The end of December, 1914, found Sara Lee quite contented. If it was resignation rather than content, no one

but Sara Lee knew the difference. Knitting, too; but not for soldiers. She was, to be candid, knitting an afghan

Sara Lee rather deplored the event in her own mind, of course, for in her small circle young unmarried

women accepted the major events of life without question, and certainly without conversation. She never, for

instance, allowed her Uncle James, with whom she lived, to see her working at the afghan; and even her Aunt

Harriet had supposed it to be a sweater until it assumed uncompromising proportions.

Sara Lee's days, up to the twentieth of December, 1914, had been much alike. In the mornings she

straightened up her room, which she had copied from one in a woman's magazine, with the result that it gave

somehow the impression of a baby's bassinet, being largely dotted Swiss and ribbon. Yet in a way it was a

perfect setting for Sara Lee herself. It was fresh and virginal, and very, very neat and white. A resigned little

room, like Sara Lee, resigned to being tucked away in a corner and to having no particular outlook. Peaceful,

Sometimes in the morning between straightening her room and going to the market for Aunt Harriet, Sara

Lee looked at a newspaper. So she knew there was a war. She read the headings, and when the matter came

up for mention at the little afternoon bridge club, as it did now and then after the prizes were distributed, she

On the night of the nineteenth of December Sara Lee had read her chapter in the Bible she read it through

once each year and had braided down her hair, which was as smooth and shining and lovely as Sara Lee

herself, and had raised her window for the night when Aunt Harriet came in. Sara Lee did not know, at first,

that she had a visitor. She stood looking out toward the east, until Aunt Harriet touched her on the arm.

So Sara Lee got into her white bed with the dotted Swiss valance, and drew the covers to her chin, and looked

a scant sixteen. Aunt Harriet, who was an unsentimental woman, childless and diffident, found her suddenly

very appealing there in her smooth bed, and did an unexpected thing. She kissed her. Then feeling extremely

Perhaps it was because the light was out that Sara Lee became articulate. Perhaps it was because things that

had been forming in her young mind for weeks had at last crystallized into words. Perhaps it was because of a

picture she had happened on that day, of a boy lying wounded somewhere on a battlefield and calling

"The war," said Sara Lee. "I was just thinking about all those women over there like Anna, you know. They

they had babies, and got everything ready for them. And then the babies grew up, and they're all getting

"It's horrible," said Aunt Harriet. "Do you want another blanket? It's cold tonight."

"I'm a little worried about your Uncle James," said Aunt Harriet, at the door. "He's got indigestion. I think I'll

"I said that too, once," said Aunt Harriet complacently. "What's got into your head now?"

Aunt Harriet was conscious of a hazy impression of indelicacy. Coming from Sara Lee it was startling and

revolutionary. In Aunt Harriet's world young women did not question their duty, which was to marry,

preferably some one in the neighborhood, and bear children, who would be wheeled ahout that same

neighborhood in perambulators and who would ultimately grow up and look after themselves.

"Of having babies, and getting to care about them, and then There will always be wars, won't there?"

"You turn over and go to sleep," counseled Aunt Harriet. "And stop looking twenty years or more ahead."

Perhaps, had she ever had time during the crowded months that followed, Sara Lee would have dated certain

things from that cold frosty night in December when she began to question things. For after all that was what

She lay in her white bed and looked at things for the first time. The sky had seemed low that night. Things

were nearer. The horizon was close. And beyond that peaceful horizon, to the east, something was going on

that could not be ignored. Men were dying. Killing and dying. Men who had been waited for as Anna

Downstairs she could hear Aunt Harriet moving about. The street was quiet, until a crowd of young people

"It's horrible," said Sara Lee to herself. There was a change in her, but she was still inarticulate. Somewhere

in her mind, but not formulated, was the feeling that she was too comfortable. Her peace was a cheap peace,

bought at no price. Her last waking determination was to finish the afghan quickly and to to knit for the men

Uncle James was ill the next morning. Sara Lee went for the doctor, but Anna's hour had come and he was

with her. Late in the afternoon he came, however looking a bit gray round the mouth with fatigue, but

triumphant. He had on these occasions always a sense of victory; even, in a way, a eeling of being part of a

great purpose. He talked at such times of the race, as one may who is doing his best by it.

"Well," he said when Sara Lee opened the door, "it's a boy. Eight pounds. Going to be redheaded, too." He

"No. It's not that. It's only " She checked herself. He wouldn't understand. The race required girl babies.

"I've put a blue bow on my afghan. Pink is for boys," she said, and led the way upstairs.

Very simple and orderly was the small house, as simple and orderly as Sara Lee's days in it. Time was to

come when Sara Lee, having left it, ached for it with every fiber of her body and her soul for its bright

curtains and fresh paint, its regularity, its shining brasses and growing plants, its very kitchen pans and

greenandwhite oilcloth. She was to ache, too, for her friends their small engrossing cares, their kindly

Time was to come, too, when she came back, not to the little house, it is true, but to her friends, to Anna and

Uncle James died the next day. One moment he was there, an uneasy figure, under the tulip quilt, and the

next he had gone away entirely, leaving a terrible quiet behind him. He had been the center of the little house,

a big and cheery and not overorderly center. Followed his going not only quiet, but a wretched tidiness.

And, in the way of mourning women, things that Uncle James had said which had passed unheeded came

back to her. One of them was when he had proposed to adopt a Belgian child, and Aunt Harriet had offered

"All right," he had said. "Of course, if you feel that way about it ! But I feel kind of mean, sometimes,

There was that other time, too, when the German Army was hurling itself, wave after wave, across the Yser

only of course Sara Lee knew nothing of the Yser then and when it seemed as though the attenuated Allied

line must surely crack and give. He had said then that if he were only twenty years younger he would go

"And what about me?" Aunt Harriet had asked. " But I suppose I wouldn't matter."

There had followed one of those absurd wrangles as to whether or not Aunt Harriet would go to Jennie's in

the rather remote contingency of Uncle James' becoming twenty years younger and going away.

And now Uncle James had taken on the wings of the morning and was indeed gone away. And again it

became a question of Jennie's. Aunt Harriet, rather dazed at first, took to arguing it pro and con.

"Of course she has room for me," she would say in her thin voice. "There's that little room that was Edgar's.

Sara Lee was knitting socks now, all a trifle tight as to heel. "I know," she would say. "I'll get along. Don't

Always these talks ended on a note of exasperation for Aunt Harriet. For Sara Lee's statement that she could

"If only you'd marry Harvey," she would say. "I don't know what's come over you. You used to like him well

"I've seen you jump when the telephone bell rang. Your Uncle James often spoke about it. He noticed more

than most people thought." She followed Sara Lee's eyes down the street to where Anna was wheeling her

baby slowly up and down. Even from that distance Sara Lee could see the bit of pink which was the bow on

"Perhaps I am," she said; "but not the sort of thing you think. I just don't see the use of it, that's all. Aunt

"Mabel Andrews was three years. It spoiled her looks too. She used to be a right pretty girl."

The house was very quiet and still those days. There was an interlude of emptiness and order, of long days

during which Aunt Harriet alternately grieved and planned, and Sara Lee thought of many things. At the Red

Cross meetings all sorts of stories were circulated; the Belgian atrocity tales had just reached the country, and

were spreading like wildfire. There were arguments and disagreements. A girl named Schmidt was militant

against them and soon found herself a small island of defiance entirely surrounded by disapproval. Mabel

Andrews came once to a meeting and in businesslike fashion explained the Red Cross dressings and gave a

lesson in bandaging. Forerunner of the many firstaid classes to come was that hour of Mabel's, and made

"You might as well all get busy and learn to do such things," she stated in her brisk voice. "One of our

"I could clean up, couldn't I? There must be something. I'd do anything I could. Don't they have people to

Mabel was on doubtful ground there. She knew of a woman who had been permitted to take over her own

She carries supplies to small hospitals in outoftheway places," she said. "But I don't suppose you can do

However, she gave Sara Lee a New York address, and Sara Lee wrote and offered herself. She said nothing

to Aunt Harriet, who had by that time elected to take Edgar's room at Cousin Jennie's and was putting Uncle

James' clothes in tearful order to send to Belgium. After a time she received a reply.

We have put your name on our list of volunteers," said the letter, but of course you understand that only

trained workers are needed now. France and England are full of untrained women who are eager to help."

Sara Lee's attitude toward Harvey was one that she never tried to analyze. When he was not with her she

thought of him tenderly, romantically. This was perhaps due to the photograph of him on her mantel. There

was a dash about the picture rather lacking in the original, for it was a profile, and in it the young man's

longish hair, worn pompadour, the slight thrust forward of the head, the arch of the nostrils, gave him a sort

of tense eagerness, a look of running against the wind. From the photograph Harvey might have been a

So during the daytime Sarah Lee looked at intervals at the photograph, and got that feel of drive and

force. And in the evenings Harvey came, and she lost it. For, outside of a frame, he became a rather sturdy

figure, of no romance, but of a comforting solidity. A kindly young man, with a rather wide face and hands

disfigured as to fingers by much early baseball. He had heavy shoulders, the sort a girl might rely on to carry

many burdens. A younger and tidier Uncle James, indeed the same cheery manner, the same robust

To earn enough to keep those dependent on him, and to do it fairly; to tell the truth and wear clean linen and

not run into debt; and to marry Sara Lee and love and cherish her all his life this was Harvey. A plain and

He came that night to see Sarah Lee. There was nothing unusual about that. He came every night. But he

came that night full of determination. That was not unusual, either, but it had not carried him far. He had no

idea that his picture was romantic. He would have demanded it back had he so much as suspected it. He wore

his hair in a pompadour because of the prosaic fact that he had a cowlick. He was very humble about

Sara Lee was in the parlor, waiting for him. The one electric lamp was lighted, so that the phonograph in one

corner became only a bit of reflected light. There was a gas fire going, and in front of it was a white fur rug.

In Aunt Harriet's circle there were few orientals. The Encyc1opaedia Britannica, not yet entirely paid for,

stood against the wall, and a leather chair, hollowed by Uncle James' solid body, was by the fire. It was just

such a tidy, rather vulgar and homelike room as no doubt Harvey would picture for his own home. He had of

Sara Lee, in a black dress, admitted him. When he had taken off his ulster and his overshoes he had been

Then he stopped. Sometimes the wonder of Sara Lee got him in the throat. She had so much the look of being

poised for flight. Even in her quietest moments there was that about her a sort of repressed eagerness, a

look of seeing things far away. Aunt Harriet said that there were times when she had a "flighty" look.

And that night it was that impression of elusiveness that stopped Harvey's amiable prattle about the weather

"I don't know," he muttered. "You sometimes you look as though " Then he put his arms round her. "I

love you," he said. "I'll be good to you, Sara Lee, if you'll have me." He bent down and put his cheek against

A woman has a way of thinking most clearly and lucidly when the man has stopped thinking. With his arms

about her Harvey could only feel. He was trembling. As for Sara Lee, instantly two pictures f1ashed through

her mind, each distinct, each clear, almost photographic. One was of Anna, in her tiny house down the street,

dragged with a nursing baby. The other was that one from a magazine of a boy dying on a battlefield and

Two sorts of maternity one quiet, peaceful, not always beautiful, but the thing by which and to which she

It was then that he straightened away from her and looked without seeing at the blur of light which was the

phonograph. Sara Lee, glancing up, saw him then as he was in the photograph, face set and head thrust

forward, and that cleancut drive of jaw and backward flow of heavy hair that marked him all man, and virile

"I do love you, Harvey," she said, and went into his arms with the complete surrender of a child.

He was outrageously happy. He sat on the arm of Uncle James' chair where she was almost swallowed up,

and with his face against hers he made his simple plans. Now and then he kissed the little hollow under her

ear, and because he knew nothing of the abandon of a woman in a great passion he missed nothing in her

attitude. Into her silence and passivity he read the reflection of his own adoring love and thought it hers.

To be fair to Sara Lee, she imagined that her content in Harvey's devotion was something mote, as much

more as was necessary. For in Sara Lee's experience marriage was a thing compounded of affection, habit,

small differences and a home. Of passion, that passion which later she was to meet and suffer from, the

Great days were before Sara Lee. She sat by the fire and knitted, and behind the back drop on the great stage

About the middle of January Mabel Andrews A wrote to Sara Lee from France, where she was already

The evening before the letter came Harvey had brought round the engagement ring. He had made a little

money in war stocks, and into the ring he had put every dollar of his profits and a great love, and

It was a solitaire diamond, conventionally set, and larger, far larger, than the modest little stone on which

"It is lovely! It it's terrible!" said poor Sara Lee, and cried on his shoulder.

Harvey was not subtle. He had never even heard of Mabel Andrews, and he had a tendency to restrict his war

reading to the quarter column in the morning paper entitled "Salient Points of the Day's War News."

What could he know, for instance, of wounded men who were hungry? Which is what Mabel wrote about.

"You said you could cook," she had written. "Well, we need cooks, and something to cook. Sometime they'll

have it all fixed, no doubt, but just now it's awful, Sara Lee. The British have money and food, plenty of it.

But here yesterday I cut the clothes off a wounded Belgian boy. He had been fortyeight hours on a railway

It was early in the war then, and between Ypres and the sea stretched a long thin line of Belgian trenches. A

frantic Belgian Government, thrust out of its own land, was facing the problem, with scant funds and with no

materiel of any sort, for feeding that desolate little army. France had her own problems her army,

nonproductive industrially, and the great and constantly growing British forces quartered there, paying for

what they got, but requiring much. The world knows now of the starvation of Germanoccupied Belgium.

What it does not know and may never know is of the struggle during those early days to feed the heroic

Hospital trains they could improvise out of what rolling stock remained to them. Money could be borrowed,

and was. But food? Clothing? Ammunition? In his little villa on the seacoast the Belgian King knew that his

soldiers were hungry, and paced the floor of his tiny livingroom; and over in an American city whose

skyline was as pointed with furnace turrets as Constantinople's is with mosques, over there Sara Lee heard

Later on that evening, with Harvey's wide cheerful face turned adoringly to her, Sara Lee formulated a

"I guess they don't need me, honey. I'd be the dickens of a lot of use! Never fired a gun in my life."

"Nobody wants anybody to go," she said not very elegantly. "I'd just I'd rather like to think you wanted to

That was almost too subtle for Harvey. Something about him was rather reminiscent of Uncle James on

"It's not our fight," he said. "And as far as that goes, I'm not so sure there isn't right on both sides. Or wrong.

Most likely wrong. I'd look fine going over there to help the Allies, and then making up my mind it was the

British who'd spilled the beans. Now let's talk about something interesting for instance, how much we love

It was always "we" with Harvey. In his simple creed if a girl accepted a man and let him kiss her and wore

his ring it was a reciprocal love affair. It never occurred to him that sometimes as the evening dragged toward

a close Sara Lee was just a bit weary of his arms, and that she sought, after he had gone, the haven of her

little white room, and closed the door, and had to look rather a long time at his photograph before she was in

But that night after his prolonged leavetaking Sara Lee went upstairs to her room and faced the situation.

She was going to marry Harvey. She was committed to that. And she loved him; not as he cared, perhaps, but

he was a very definite part of her life. Once or twice when he had been detained by business she had missed

Sara Lee had known comparatively few men. In that small and simple circle of hers, with its tennis court in a

vacant lot, its one or two inexpensive cars, its picnics and porch parties, there was none of the usual give and

take of more sophisticated circles. Boys and girls paired off rather early, and remained paired by tacit

agreement; there was comparatively little shifting. There were few free lances among the men, and none

among the girls. When she was seventeen Harvey had made it known unmistakably that Sara Lee was his,

and no trespassing. And for two years he had without intentional selfishness kept Sara Lee for himself.

That was how matters stood that January night when Sara Lee went upstairs after Harvey had gone and read

Mabel's letter, with Harvey's photograph turned to the wall. Under her calm exterior a little flame of rebellion

was burning in her. Harvey's perpetual "we," his attitude toward the war, and Mabel's letter, with what it

opened before her, had set the match to something in Sara Lee she did not recognize a strain of the

adventurer, a throwback to some wandering ancestor perhaps. But more than anything it had set fire to the

Yet, had Aunt Harriet not come in just then, the flame might have died. And had it died a certain small page

Aunt Harriet came in hesitatingly. She wore a black wrapper, and her face, with her hair drawn back for the

"I thought I'd better come in. There's something I can tell you in the morning if you're tired."

"I've had a letter from Jennie," she stated. "The girl's gone, and the children have whooping cough. She'd like

"To do the maid's work!" said Sara Lee indig nantly. "You mustn't do it, that's all! She can get somebody."

But Aunt Harriet was firm. She was not a fairweather friend, and since Jennie was good enough to offer her

"You'll have to get married right away," she finished. "Goodness knows it's time enough! For two years

Harvey has been barking like a watchdog in front of the house and keeping every other young man away."

"He's only been lying on the doormat, Aunt Harriet," she observed. "I don't believe he knows how to bark."

"Oh, he's mild enough. He may change after marriage. Some do. But," she added hastily, "he'll be a good

Suddenly something that had been taking shape in Sara Lee's small head, quite unknown to her, developed

Aunt Harriet's eyes fell on the photograph with its face to the wall, and she started.

"No, of course not! I have something else I want to do first. That's all. Aunt Harriet, I want to go to France."

Aunt Harriet began to tremble, and Sara Lee went over and put her young arms about her.

"Don't look like that," she said. "It's only for a little while. I've got to go. I just have to, that's all!"

"I don't know. I'll find some way. I've had a letter from Mabel. Things are awful over there."

"And how will you help them?" Her face worked nervously. "Is it going to help for you to be shot? Or carried

off by the Germans?" The atrocity stories were all that Aunt Harriet knew of the war, and all she could think

Sara Lee straightened and looked out where between the white curtains the spire of the Methodist Church

There was no sleep in the little house that night. Sara Lee could hear the older woman moving about in her

lonely bed, where the spring still sagged from Uncle James' heavy form, and at last she went in and crept in

beside her. Toward morning Aunt Harriet slept, with the girl's arm cross her; and then Sara Lee went back to

She had a little money, and she had heard that living was cheap abroad. She could get across then, and

perhaps keep herself. But she must do more than that, to justify her going. She must get money, and then

decide how the money was to be spent. If she could only talk it over with Uncle James! Or, with Harvey.

But she dared not go to Harvey. She was terribly frightened when she even thought of him. There was no

hope of making him understand; and no chance of reasoning with him, because, to be frank, she had no

reasons. She had only instinct instinct and a great tenderness toward suffering. No, obviously Harvey must

That morning the Methodist Church packed a barrel for the Belgians. There was a real rite of placing in it

Mrs. Augustus Gregory's old sealskin coat, now a light brown and badly worn, but for years the only one in

the neighborhood. Various familiar articles appeared, to be thrust into darkness, only to emerge in

surroundings never dreamed of in their better days the little Howard boy's first trouser suit ; the clothing of

a baby that had never lived; big Joe Hemmingway's dress suit, the one he was married in and now too small

for him. And here and there things that could ill be spared, brought in and offered with resolute cheerfulness.

Sara Lee brought some of Uncle James' things, and was at once set to work. The women there called Sara Lee

capable, but it was to take other surroundings to bring out her real efficiency.

And it was when bending over a barrel, while round her went on that pitying talk of women about a great

calamity, that Sara Lee got her great idea; and later on she made the only speech of her life.

That evening Harvey went home in a quiet glow of happiness. He had had a good day. And he had heard of a

little house that would exactly suit Sara Lee and him. He did not notice his sister's silence when he spoke

"The Leete house," he said in answer to her perfunctory question. "Will Leete has lost his mind and

volunteered for the ambulance service in France. Mrs. Leete is going to her mother's."

"Duty nothing!" He seemed almost unduly irritated. " He's tired of the commission business, that's all.

Y'ought to have heard the fellows in the office. Anyhow, they want to sublet the house, and I'm going to

His sister looked at him, and there was in her face something of the expression of the women that day as they

packed the barrel. But she said nothing until he was leaving the house that night. Then she put a hand on his

arm. She was a weary little woman, older than Harvey, and tired with many children. She had been gathering

"Don't you worry, Belle," he said. "I know I'm a fierce and domineering person, but if there's any bullying I

"Sure she's not! But she's enough like them to need a house to live in. And if she isn't crazy about the Leete

He banged out cheerfully, whistling as he went down the street. He stopped whistling, however, at Sara Lee's

door. The neighborhood preserved certain traditions as to a house of mourning. It lowered its voice in passing

and made its calls of condolence in dark clothes and a general air of gloom. Pianos near by were played only

with the windows closed, and even the milkman leaving his bottles walked on tiptoe and presented his

So Harvey stopped whistling, rang the bell apologetically, and faced a new and vivid Sara Lee, flushed and

She told him almost at once. He had only reached the dining room of the Leete house, which he was

explaining had a white wainscoting when she interrupted him. The ladies of the Methodist Church were going

to collect a certain amount each month to support a soup kitchen as near the Front as possible.

"Good work!" said Harvey heartily. "I suppose they do get hungry, poor devils. Now about the dining room

"Harvey dear," Sara Lee broke in, "I've not finished. I I'm going over to run it."

"But I am! It's all arranged. It's my plan. They've all wanted to do something besides giving clothes. They

send barrels, and they never hear from them again, and it's hard to keep interested. But with me there, writing

home and telling them, 'Today we served soup to this man, and that man, perhaps wounded.' And and that

sort of thing don't you see how interested every one will be? Mrs. Gregory has promised twentyfive

"You're not going," said Harvey in a flat tone. "That's all. Don't talk to me about it."

Sara Lee flushed deeper and started again, but rather hopelessly. There was no converting a man who would

"But somebody must go," she said with a tightening of her voice. "Here's Mabel Andrews' letter. Read it and

Nevertheless he took it and read it. He read slowly. He did nothing quickly except assert his masculine

domination. He had all the faults of his virtues; he was as slow as he was sure, as unimaginative as he was

"I don't think you mean it," he said. "I give you credit for too much sense. Maybe some one is needed over

there. I guess things are pretty bad. But why should you make it your affair? There are about a million

"Afraid! My God, I should think they would be afraid! And you're asking me to let you go into danger, to put

off our wedding while you wander about over there with a million men and no women and "

"You're wrong, Harvey dear," said Sara Lee in a low voice. "I am not asking you at all. I am telling you that I

Sara Lee's leaving made an enormous stir in her small community. Opinion was divided. She was right

according to some; she was mad according to others. The women of the Methodist Church, finding a real

field of activity, stood behind her solidly. Guaranties of funds came in in a steady flow, though the amounts

were small; and, on the word going about that she was to start a soup kitchen for the wounded, housewives

Sara Lee, going to a land where the meat was mostly horse and where vegetables were scarce and limited to

potatoes, Brussels sprouts and cabbage, found herself the possessor of recipes for making such sickroom

dainties as mushroom soup, cream of asparagus, clam broth with whipped cream, and from Mrs. Gregory, the

She was very busy and rather sad. She was helping Aunt Harriet to close the house and getting her small

wardrobe in order. And once a day she went to a school of languages and painfully learned from a fierce and

kindly old Frenchman a list of French nouns and prefixes like this: Le livre, le crayon, la plume, la fenetre,

Considering that Harvey came every night and ran the gamut of the emotions, from pleading and

expostulation at eight o'clock to black fury at ten, when he banged out of the house, Sara Lee was amazingly

calm. If she had moments of weakness, when the call from overseas was less insistent than the call for peace

and protection if the nightly drawn picture of the Leete house, with tile mantels and a white bathroom,

sometimes obtruded itself as against her approaching homelessness, Sara Lee made no sign.

She had her photograph taken for her passport, and when Harvey refused one she sent it to him by mail, with

the word "Please" in the corner. Harvey groaned over it, and got it out at night and scolded it wildly; and then

Not Sara Lee, and certainly not Harvey, knew what was calling her. And even later, when waves of

homesickness racked her with wild remorse, she knew that she had had to go and that she could not return

until she had done the thing for which she had been sent, whatever that might be.

The first thing that struck Sara Lee was the way she was saying her nightly prayers in all sorts of odd places.

In trains and in hotels and, after sufficient interval, in the steamer. She prayed under these novel

circumstances to be made a better girl, and to do a lot of good over there, and to be forgiven for hurting

Harvey. She did this every night, and then got into her narrow bed and studied French nouns because she

had decided that there was no time for verbs and numbers, which put her to sleep.

"Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq," Sara Lee would begin, and go on, rocking gently in her berth as the steamer

roIled, "Vingt, vii gtetun, vingtdeux, trente, trente et un " Her voice would die away. The book on

the floor and Harvey's picture on the tiny table, Sara Lee would sleep. And as the ship trembled the light over

One thing surprised her as she gradually met some of her fellow passengers. She was not alone on her errand.

Others there were on board, young and old women, an4 men, too who had felt the call of mercy and were

going, as ignorant as she, to help. As ignorant, but not so friendless. Most of them were accredited

somewhere. They had definite objectives. But what was more alarming they talked in big figures. Great

organizations were behind them. She heard of the rehabilitation of Belgium, and portable hospitals, and

Not once did Sara Lee hear of anything so humble as a soup kitchen. The war was a vast thing, they would

observe. It could only be touched by great organizations. Individual effort was negligible.

"But I should think," she said, "that even great organizations depend on the on individual efforts."

It is hard to say just when the lights went down on Sara Lee's quiet stage and the interlude began. Not on the

steamer, for after three days of discouragement and good weather they struck a storm; and Sara Lee's fine

frenzy died for a time, of nausea. She did not appear again until the boat entered the Mersey, a pale and

shaken angel of mercy, not at all sure of her wings, and most terribly homesick.

That night Sara Lee made a friend, one that Harvey would have approved of, an elderly Englishman named

Travers. He was standing by the rail in the rain looking out at the blinking signal lights on both sides of the

river. The ship for the first time had abandoned its policy of darkness and the decks were bathed in light.

Overhead the yardarm blinkers were signaling, and directly over Sara Lee's head a great white searchlight

swept the water ahead. The wind was blowing a gale, and the red and green lights of the pilot boat swung in

Sara Lee stood beside Mr. Travers, for companionship only. He had preserved a typically British aloofness

during the voyage, and he had never spoken to her. But there was something forlorn in Sara Lee that night as

she clutched her hat with both hands and stared out at the shore lights. And if he had been silent during the

voyage he had not been deaf. So he knew why almost every woman on the ship was making the voyage; but

Mr. Travers concealed the surprise of a man who was making his seventysecond voyage.

"But," marveled Sara Lee rather breathlessly, "have we come all the way without any pilot?"

He explained that to her, and showed her a few moments later how the pilot came with incredible rapidity up

To be honest, he had been watching for the pilot boat, not to see what to Sara Lee was the thrilling progress

of the pilot up the ladder, but to get the newspapers he would bring on with him. It is perhaps explanatory of

the way things went for Sara Lee from that time on that he quite forgot his newspapers.

The chairs were gone from the decks, preparatory to the morning landing, so they walked about and Sara Lee

at last told him her story the ladies of the Methodist Church, and the one hundred dollars a month she was

to have, outside of her traveling expenses, to found and keep going a soup kitchen behind the lines.

Then she told him of Mabel Andrews' letter, and at last read it to him. He listened attentively. "Of course,"

she said when she had put the letter back into her bag, "I can't feed a lot, even with soup. But if I only help a

"Very much worth doing," he said gravely. "I suppose you are not, by any chance, going to write a weekly

"My dear child," he said, "now and then I find somebody who helps to revive my faith in human nature.

Sara Lee did not understand. The touch on the shoulder had made her think suddenly of Uncle James, and her

"Twenty pounds!" repeated Mr. Travers to himself. "Twenty pounds!" And aloud: "Of course you speak

The sense of unreality which the twenty pounds had roused in Mr. Travers' cautious British mind grew. No

money, no French, no objective, just a great human desire to be useful in her own small way this was a new

type to him. What a sporting chance this frail bit of a girl was taking! And he noticed now something that had

escaped him before a dauntlessness, a courage of the spirit rather than of the body, that was in the very

"I'm not afraid about the language," she was saying. "I have a phrase book. And a hungry man, maybe sick or

wounded, can understand a bowl of soup in any language, I should think. And I can cook!"

It was a perplexed and thoughtful Mr. Travers who sipped his Scotchandsoda in the smoking room before

retiring, lie took the problem to bed with him and woke up in the night saying: "Twenty pounds! Good God!"

In the morning they left the ship. He found Sara Lee among the K's, waiting to have her passport examined,

and asked her where she was stopping in London. She had read somewhere of Claridge's in a novel

"I shouldn't advise Claridge's," he said, reflecting rather grimly on the charges of that very exclusive hotel.

So he wrote out the name of a fine old English house on Trafalgar Square, where she could stay until she

went to France. There would be the matter of a passport to cross the Channel. It might take a day or two.

Perhaps he could help her. He would give himself the pleasure of calling on her very soon.

Sara Lee got on the train and rode up to London. She said to herself over and over: "This is England. I am

really in England." But it did not remove the sense of unreality. Even the English grass, bright green in

She tried, sitting in the strange train with its small compartments, to think of Harvey. She looked at her ring

and tried to recall some of the tender things he had said to her. But Harvey eluded her. She could not hear his

voice. And when she tried to see him it was Harvey of the wide face and the angry eyes of the last days that

Morley's comforted her. The man at the door had been there for forty years, and was beyond surprise. He had

her story in twentyfour hours, and in fortyeight he was her slave. The elderly chambermaid mothered her,

and failed to report that Sara Lee was doing a small washing in her room and had pasted handkerchiefs over

"Going over, are you?" she said. "Dear me, what courage you've got, miss! They tell me things is horrible

"That's why I'm going," replied Sara Lee, and insisted on helping to make up the bed.

Mr. Travers put in a fretful twentyfour hours before he came to see her. He lunched at Brooks', and

"A young girl!" exclaimed the M. P. "Why, deuce take it, it's no place for a young girl."

"An American," explained Mr. Travers uncomfortably. " She's perfectly able to look after herself."

"Soup," said Mr. Travers in a voice of suppressed irritation. "She's got a little money, and she wants to

establish a soup kitchen behind the Belgian trenches on a line of communication. I suppose," he continued

angrily, "even you will admit that the Belgian Army needs all the soup it can get."

"Neither do I. But I'm exceedingly glad that a few of them have the courage to go there."

It ended by the M. P. agreeing to use his influence with the War Office to get Sara Lee to France. He was

very unwilling. The spy question was looming large those days. Even the Red Cross had unwittingly spread

"I may possibly get her to France. I don't know, of course," he said in that ungracious tone in which an

Englishman often grants a favor which he will go to any amount of trouble to do. "After that it's up to her."

Mr. Travers reflected rather grimly that after that it was apparently up to him.

Sara Lee sat in her room at Morley's Hotel and looked out at the life of London policemen with chin straps;

schoolboys in high silk hats and Eton suits, the hats generally in disreputable condition; clerks dressed as men

at home dressed for Easter Sunday church; and men in uniforms. Only a fair sprinkling of these last, in those

early days. On the first afternoon there was a military funeral. A regiment of Scots, in kilts, came swinging

down from the church of St. Martin in the Fields, tall and wonderful men, grave and very sad. Behind them,

on a gun carriage, was the body of their officer, with the British flag over the casket and his sword and cap on

Sara Lee cried bitterly. It was not until they had gone that she remembered that Harvey had always called the

Scots men in women's petticoats. She felt a thrill of shame for him, and no amount of looking at his picture

Mr. Travers called the second afternoon and was received by August at the door as an old friend.

"She's waiting in there," he said. "Very nice young lady, sir. Very kind to everybody."

Mr. Travers found her by a window looking out. There was a recruiting meeting going on in Trafalgar

Square, the speakers standing on the monument. Now and then there was a cheer, and some young fellow

sheepishly offered himself. Sara Lee was having a mad desire to go over and offer herself too. Because, she

reflected, she had been in London almost two days, and she was as far from France as ever. Not knowing, of

There was a young man in the room, but Sara Lee had not noticed him. He was a tall, very blond young man,

in a darkblue Belgian uniform with a quaint cap which allowed a gilt tassel to drop over his forehead. He sat

on a sofa, curling up the ends of a very small mustache, his legs, in cavalry boots, crossed and extending a

The lights were up now, beyond the back drop, the stage darkened. A new scene with a vengeance, a scene

laid in strange surroundings, with men, whole men and wounded men and spying men and Sara Lee and

this young Belgian, whose name was Henri and whose other name, because of what he suffered and what be

Henri sat on his sofa and watched Sara Lee. Also he shamelessly listened to the conversation, not because he

meant to be an eavesdropper but because he liked Sara Lee's voice. He had expected a highly inflected British

voice, and instead here was something entirely different that is, Sara Lee's endeavor to reconcile the

English "a" with her normal western Pennsylvania pronunciation. She did it quite unintentionally, but she had

a good ear and it was difficult, for instance, to say "rather" when Mr. Travers said "rawther."

Henri had a good ear too. And the man he was waiting for did not come. Also he had been to school in

England and spoke English rather better than most British. So he heard a conversation like this, the gaps

SARA LEE: Awfully sorry to be But what shall I do if I do get over? The chambermaid up stairs very

Henri knew that she was an American. He also realized that she was on the verge of tears. He glared at poor

"There must be some way," said Sara Lee. "If they need help and I have read you Mabel Andrews' letter

"They would be, of course," he said. "But the fact is there's been some trouble about spies, and "

"My dear child," remonstrated Mr. Travers, slightly exasperated, "they're not thinking about you at all. The

"Let them cable home and find out about me. I can give them references. Why, all sorts of prominent people

There were no gaps for Henri now. Sara Lee did not care who heard her, and even Mr. Travers had slightly

raised his voice. Henri was divided between a conviction that he ought to go away and a mad desire to join in

the conversation, greatly augmented when Sara Lee went to the window and wiped her eyes.

Sara Lee looked over her shoulder. "But of course I do!" she said. "And German and and Yiddish, and all

It might all have ended there very easily. Sara Lee might have fought the War Office singlehanded and won

out, but it is extremely unlikely. The chances at that moment were that she would spend endless days and

hours in anterooms, and tell her story and make her plea a hundred times. And then go back home to

Harvey and the Leete house, and after a time, like Mrs. Gregory, speak rather too often of "the time I went

But Sara Lee was to go to France, and even further, to the fragment of unconquered Belgium that remained.

And never so long as she lived, would she be able to forget those days or to speak of them easily. So she

stood by the window trying not to cry, and a little donkey drawing a coster's cart moved out in front of the

traffic and was caught by a motor bus. There was only time for the picture the tiny beast lying there and her

owner wringing his hands. Such of the traffic as could get by swerved and went on. London must move,

And Sara moved too. One moment she was there by the window. And the next she had given a stifled cry and

Henri was already up and at the window. What he saw was Sara Lee making her way through the stream of

vehicles, taking a dozen chances for her life. Henri waited until he saw her crouched by the donkey, its head

That is how Henri, of no other name that may be given, met Sara Lee Kennedy, of Pennsylvania under a

London motor bus. And that, I think, will be the picture he carries of her until he dies, her soft eyes full of

pity, utterly regardless of the dirt and the crowd and an expostulating bobby, with that grotesque and

Henri crawled under the bus, though the policeman was extremely anxious to keep him out. And he ran a

"It will die," replied Henri, "but how soon? They are very strong, these little beasts."

The conductor of the bus made a suggestion then, one that froze the blood round Sara Lee's heart: "If you'll

The total result of a conference between four policemen, the costermonger, and, by that time, Mr. Travers

was to draw the animal off the street and into the square. Sara Lee stuck close by. So, naturally, did Henri.

And when the hopeless condition of Nellie, as they learned she was named, became increasingly evident,

"A kindness," he explained, as Sara Lee would have caught his hand. "The only way, mademoiselle."

Mr. Travers had the usual British hatred of a crowd and publicity, coupled with a deadly fear of getting into

the papers, except through an occasional letter to the Times. He vanished just before the shot, and might have

been seen moving rapidly through the square, turning over in his mind the difficulty of trying to treat young

But Henri understood. He had had a French mother, and there is a leaven of French blood in the American

temperament, old Huguenot, some of it. So Americans love beauty and obey their impulses and find life good

to do things rather than to be something or other more or less important. And so Henri could quite understand

how Sara Lee had forgotten herself when Mr. Travers could not. And he understood, also, when Sara Lee,

having composed the little dondey's quiet figure, straightened up with tears in her eyes.

"It was very dear of you to come out," she said. "Andof course it was the best thing."

She held out her hand. The crowd had gone. Traffic was moving again, racing to make up for five lost

precious moments. The square was dark, that first darkness of London, when air raids were threatened but

had not yet taken place. From the top of the Admiralty, near by, a flashlight shot up into the air and began its

"You are very brave, mademoiselle," he said, and touched her hand with his lips.

Yet for a day or two nothing much was changed. Mr. Travers sent Sara Lee a note that be was taking up her

problem with the Foreign Office; and he did indeed make an attempt. He also requested his wife to ask Sara

Sara Lee was extremely nervous on the day she went. She wore a black jacket suit with a white collar, and

she carried Aunt Harriet's mink furs, Aunt Harriet mourning thoroughly and completely in black astrachan.

She had the faculty of the young American girl of looking smart without much expense, and she appeared

She followed the neat maid up a wide staircase to a door with a screen just inside, and heard her name

announced for the first time in her life. Sara Lee took a long breath and went inside, to a most discouraging

Mr. Travers was on the hearth rug. Mrs. Travers was in a chair, a portly woman with a not unkindly face, but

the brusque manner many Englishwomen acquire after forty. She held Sara Lee's hand and gave her a

Mrs. Travers looked helplessly at her husband, while she rang the bell for tea. That was another thing Sara

Lee had read about but never seen that ringing for tea. At home no one served afternoon tea; but at a party,

when refreshments were coming, the hostess slipped out to the kitchen and gave a whispered order or two.

"I shall be frank with you," said Mrs. Travers. "I think it quite impossible. It is not getting you over. That

might be done. And of course there are women over there young ones too. But the army objects very

seriously to their being in danger. And of course one never knows " Her voice trailed off vaguely. She

"I have a niece over there," she said as the tea tray came in. "Her mother was fool enough to let her go. Now

"She won't come. Little idiot! She's in Paris, however. I daresay she is safe enough."

Mrs. Travers made the tea thoughtfully. So far Mr. Travers had hardly spoken, but he cheered in true British

fashion at the sight of the tea. Sara Lee, exceedingly curious as to the purpose of a very small stand somewhat

resembling a piano stool, which the maid had placed at her knee, learned that it was to hold her muffin plate.

"And now," said Mr. Travers, "suppose we come to the point. There doesn't seem to be a chance to get you

over, my child. Same answer everywhere. Place is full of untrained women. Spies have been using Red Cross

"But I can't go back," she said. "I well, I just can't. They're raising the money for me, and all sorts of people

are giving things. A a friend of mine is baking cakes and sending on the money. She has three children, and

"I'm afraid you don't understand. It is you we want to help. Neither Mr. Travers nor I feel that a girl so young

as you, and alone, has any place near the firing line. And that, I fancy, is where you wish to go. As to helping

the Belgians, we have four in the house now. They do not belong to the same social circles, so they prefer tea

in their own rooms. You are quite right about their needing help too. They cannot even make up their own

"Of course not. But I merely think that Miss er Kennedy should know both sides of the picture."

Somewhat later Sara Lee was ushered downstairs by the neat maid, who stood on the steps and blew a whistle

for a taxi Sara Lee had come in a bus. She carried in her hand the address of a Belgian commission of relief

at the Savoy Hotel, and in her heart, for the first time, a doubt of her errand. She gave the Savoy address

Coming up she had sat on top of the bus and watched with wide curious, eyes the strange traffic of London.

The park had fascinated her the little groups of drilling men in khaki, the mellow tones of a bugle, and here

and there on the bridle paths wellgroomed men and women on horseback, as cleancut as the horses they

rode, and on the surface as careless of what was happening across the Channel. But she saw nothing now. She

sat back and twisted Harvey's ring on her finger, and saw herself going back, her work undone, her faith in

The Savoy was crowded. Men in uniform, a sprinkling of anxiousfaced wives and daughters, and more than

a sprinkling of gaily dressed and painted women, filled the lobby or made their way slowly up and down the

staircase. It was all so utterly different from what she had expected so bright, so full of life. These wellfed

people they seemed happy enough. Were they all wrong back home? Was the war the ghastly thing they

Long months afterward Sara Lee was to learn that the Savoy was not London. She was to learn other things

that America knew more, through a free press, of war conditions than did England. And she was to learn what

never ceased to surprise her the sporting instinct of the British which made their early slogan "Business as

usual." Business and pleasure but only on the surface. Underneath was a dogged and obstinate

determination to make up as soon as possible for the humiliation of the early days of the war.

Those were the transition days in England. The people were slowly awaking to the magnitude of the thing

that was happening to them. Certain elements the press, long under political dominion, were preparing to

come out for a coalition ministry. The question of highexplosive shells as against shrapnel was bitterly

fought, some of the men at home standing fast for shrapnel, as valuable against, German artillery as a garden

hose. Men coming back from the Front were pleading for real help, not men only, not Red Cross, not food

and supplies, but for something more competent than mere man power to hold back the deluge.

But over it all was that surface cheerfulness, that bestfootforward attitude of London. And Sara Lee saw

only that, and lost faith. She had come far to help. But here was food in plenty and bands playing and smiling

men in uniform drinking tea and playing for a little. That, too, Sara Lee was to understand later; but just then

she did not. At home there was more surface depression. The atrocities, the plight of the Belgians, the honor

But later on, down in a crowded dark little room, things were different. She was one of a long line, mostly

women. They were unhappy and desolate enough, God knows. They sat or stood with a sort of weary

resignation. Now and then a short heavy man with an upcurled mustache caine out and took in one or two.

It was after seven when Sara Lee's turn came. The heavyset man spoke to her in French, but he failed to use

"I do; but not much," he replied. Though his French had been rapid he spoke English slowly. "How can we

"We have many offers of help. What we need, mademoiselle, is not workers. We have, at our base hospital,

"I am sorry. The whole world is sorry for Belgium, and many would work. What we need " he shrugged his

Sara Lee looked extremely small and young. The Belgian sat down on a chair and surveyed her carefully.

"You English are doing a a fine work for us," he observed. "We are grateful. But of course the" he

"But I am not English," said Sara Lee. "And I have a little money. I want to make soup for your wounded

men at a railway station or any place. I can make good soup. And I shall have money each month to buy

Long afterward, when the lights behind the back drop had gone down and Sara Lee was back again in her

familiar setting, one of the clearest pictures she retained of that amazing interlude was of that crowded little

room in the Savoy, its single littered desk, its two typewriters creating an incredible din, a large gentleman in

a darkblue military cape seeming to fill the room. And in corners and off stage, so to speak, perhaps a half

The conversation was in French, and Sara Lee's acquaintance of the passage acted as interpreter. It was only

when Sara Lee found that a considerable discussion was going on in which she had no part that she looked

round and saw her friend of two nights before and of the little donkey. He was watching her intently, and

Now men, in Sara Lee's mind, had until now been divided into the ones at home, one's own kind, the sort who

married one's friends or oneself, the kind who called their wives "mother" after the first baby came, and were

easily understood, plain men, decent and Godfearing and selfrespecting; and the men of that world outside

America, who were foreigners. One might like foreigners, but they were outsiders.

So there was no selfconsciousness in Sara Lee's bow and smile. Later on Henri was to find that lack of self

and sex consciousness one of the maddening mysteries about Sara Lee. Perhaps he never quite understood it.

More conversation, in an increasing staccato. Short contributions from the men crowded into corners.

Frenzied beating of the typewriting machines, and overhead and far away the band. There was no air in the

room. Sara Lee was to find out a great deal later on about the contempt of the Belgians for air. She loosened

So far Henri had not joined in the discussion. But now he came forward and spoke. Also, having finished, he

"They are most grateful," he explained. "It is a a practical idea, mademoiselle. If you were in Belgium "

he smiled rather mirthlessly " if you were already in the very small part of Belgium remaining to us, we

could place you very usefully. But the British War Office is most careful, just now. You understand there

"They can watch me if they want to," she said. "What trouble can I make? I've only just landed. You you'd

"There is no doubt of that," he said, unconscious of offense. "But the War Office " He held out his hands.

Sara Lee, who had already caught the British "a" and was rather overdoing it, had a wild impulse to make the

More conversation. Evidently more difficulties but with Henri now holding the center of the stage and

speaking rapidly. The heavyset man retired and read letters under an electric lamp. The band upstairs was

having dinner. And Henri argued and wrangled. He was quite passionate. The man in the military cape

"You Americans are all brave," he said. "You like what is it you say? taking a chance, I think. Would you

Just for an instant Sara Lee hesitated. There was Harvey at home. He would not like her receiving a call from

any man. And Harvey did not like foreigners. He always said they had no respect for women. It struck her

suddenly what Harvey would call Henri's bowing and his kissing her hand, and his passionate gesticulations

And she recalled his final words, his arms so close about her that she could hardly breathe, his voice husky

"Just let me hear of any of those foreigners bothering you," he said, "and I'll go over and wipe out the whole

The other gentlemen bowed profoundly. Sara Lee, rather at a loss, gave them a friendly smile that included

them all. And then she and Henri were walking up the stairs and to the entrance, Henri's tall figure the target

Henri, too, called a taxicab. Every one in London seemed to ride in taxis. And he bent over her hand, once

"It is very kind of you, what you are doing," he said. "But, then, you Americans are all kind. And wonderful."

"You are entirely wrong, dear," she said. She was brushing her hair at the time, and it is rather a pity that it

was a profile picture and that Harvey's pictured eyes were looking off into space that is, a piece of white

canvas on a frame, used by photographers to reflect the light into the eyes. For Sara Lee with her hair down

was even lovelier than with it up. "You were wrong. They are different, but they are kind and polite. And

She intended at first to make no change in her frock. After all, it was not a social call, and if she did not dress

But slipping along the corridor after her bath, clad in a kimono and slippers and extremely nervous, she

encountered a young woman on her way to dinner, and she was dressed in that combination of street skirt and

evening blouse that some Englishwomen from the outlying districts still affect. And Sara Lee thereupon

decided to dress. She called in the elderly maid, who was already her slave, and together they went over her

It was the maid, perhaps; then who brought into Sara Lee's life the strange and mad infatuation for her that

was gradually to become a dominant issue in the next few months. For the maid chose a white dress, a soft

"I always like to see a young lady in white, miss," said the maid. "Especially when there's a healthy skin."

So Sara Lee ate her dinner alone, such a dinner as a healthy skin and body demanded. And she watched tall

young Englishwomen with fine shoulders go out with English officers in khaki, and listened to a babel of

Henri came rather late. It was one of the things she was to learn about him later that he was frequently late

It was only long afterward that she realized that such time as he spent with her was gained only at the cost of

almost superhuman effort. But that was when she knew Henri's story, and his work. She waited for him in the

reception room, where a man and a woman were having coffee and talking in a strange tongue. Henri found

her there, at something before nine, rather downcast and worried, and debating about going up to bed. She

Sara Lee moved over on the velvet sofa, and Henri lowered his long body onto it. Lowered his voice, too, for

"I'm afraid I didn't quite understand about this afternoon," began Sara Lee. "You spoke about taking a chance.

"That, and a little more, mademoiselle," said Henri. "But now that I am here I do not know.

His eyes were keen. Sara Lee had suddenly a strange feeling that he was watching the couple who talked over

their coffee, and that, oddly enough, the couple were watching him. Yet he was apparently giving his

"But you should walk," he said. "I will you walk with me? Just about the square, for air?" And in a lower

"I'll get my coat and hat," Sara Lee said, and proceeded to do so in a brisk and businesslike fashion. When

she came down Henri was emerging from the telephone booth. His face was impassive. And again when in

time Sara Lee was to know Henri's face better than she had ever known Harvey's, she was to learn that the

They went out without further speech into the clear cold night. Henri, as if from custom, threw his head back

"The plan," Henri began abruptly, "is this: You will be provided tomorrow with a passport to Boulogne.

You will, if you agree, take the midnight train for Folkestone. At the railway station here you will be

searched. At Folkestone a board, sitting in an office on the quay, will examine your passport."

"Does any one in Boulogne speak English?" Sara Lee inquired nervously. Somehow that babel of French at

the Savoy had frightened her. Her little phrase book seemed pitifully inadequate for the great things in her

"That hardly matters," said Henri, smiling faintly. "Because I think you shall not go to Boulogne."

"The place for you to go, to start from, is Calais," Henri explained. He paused, to let pass two lovers, a man

in khaki and a girl. "But Calais is difficult. It is under martial law a closed city. From Boulogne to Calais

"For goodness' sake," said Sara Lee in an exasperated tone, "how can I tell you until I know what it is?"

Henri told her. He even, standing under a street lamp, drew a small sketch for her, to make it clear. Sara Lee

stood close, watching him, and some of the lines were not as steady as they might have been. And in the

"Tonight, this eighteenth of February, the Germans commence a blockade of this coast. No vessels, if they

can prevent them, will leave the harbors; or if they do, none shall reach the other side!"

"We are eager to do as you wish, mademoiselle. But " he commenced slowly to tear up the sketch "it is

too dangerous. You are too young. If anything should go wrong and I had No. We will find another way."

"How long is this blockade to last?" Sara Lee asked out of bitter disappointment.

"Then," said Sara Lee with calm deliberation, "you might as well get out your pencil and draw another

Far enough away now, the little house at home and the peace that dwelt therein; and Harvey; and the small

white bedroom; and the daily round of quiet duties. Sara Lee had set her face toward the east, and the land of

dying men. And as Henri looked down at her she had again that poised and eager look, almost of flight, that

Sara Lee Kennedy was up at dawn the next morning. There was a very serious matter to decide, for Henri's

Sara Lee care fully laid out on the bed such articles as she could not possibly do without, and was able to

pack into her suitcase less than a fourth of them. She had fortunately brought a soft wool sweater, which

required little room. Undergarments, several blouses, the sweater and a pair of heavy shoes that was her

equipment, plus such small toilet outfit as is necessary when a young woman uses no makeup and regards

"It's a secret," cautioned Sara Lee. "I am really not sure I am going. I am only trying to go."

The maid, who found Sara Lee and the picture of Harvey on her dressing table both romantic and appealing,

offered to pack. From the first moment it was evident that she meant to include the white dress. Indeed she

"You never know what's going to happen over there," she asserted. "They do say that royalties are

everywhere, going about like common people. You'd better have a good frock with you."

She had an air of subdued excitement, and after she had established the fact that not only the white frock but

slippers and hose also would go in she went to the door and glanced up and down the passage. Then she

"Spies," she repeated. "A man and a woman, pretending to be Belgian refugees. They took them away at

Sara Lee ate very little breakfast that morning. All through England it was confidently believed that spies

were shot on discovery, a theory that has been persistent and false, save at the battle line since the

beginning of the war. And Henri's plan assumed new proportions. Suppose she made her attempt and failed?

Suppose they took her for a spy, and that tomorrow's sun found her facing a firing squad? Not, indeed, that

she had ever heard of a firing squad, as such. But she had seen spies shot in the movies. They invariably

So she absentmindedly ate her kippered herring, which had been strongly recommended by the waiter, and

tried to think of what a spy would do, so she might avoid any suspicious movements. It struck her, too, that

war seemed to have made the people on that side of the ocean extremely ready with weapons. They would be

quite likely to shoot first and ask questions afterwards which would be too late to be helpful.

She remembered Henri, for instance, and the way, without a word, he had shot the donkey.

"Dearest:" it began; "I think I am to leave for France tonight. Things seem to be moving nicely, and I am

being helped by the Belgian Relief Commission. It is composed of Belgians and is at the Savoy Hotel."

Here she stopped and cried a little. What if she should never see Harvey again never have his sturdy arms

about her? Harvey gained by distance. She remembered only his unfailing kindness and strength and his love

for her. He seemed, here at the edge of the whirlpool, a sort of eddy of peace and quiet. Even then she had no

thought of going back until her work was done, but she did an unusual thing for her, unused to demonstration

Followed directions about sending the money from the church society, a description of Morley's and

Trafalgar Square, an account of tea at the Travers', and of the little donkey without mention, however, of

But at the end came the passage which poor Harvey read and reread when the letter came, and alternately

"I do love you, Harvey dear. And I am coming back to you. I have felt that I had to do what I am doing, but I

am coming back. That's a promise. Unless, of course, I should take sick, or something like that, which isn't

"I shall wear your ring always; and always, Harvey, it will mean to me that I belong to you. With dearest

"The War Office is not letting people cross to Calais just now. But I am going to do it anyhow. It is perfectly

It was the next day that an indignant official in the censor's office read that postscript, and rose in his wrath

and sent a third Undersomethingorother to look up Sara Lee at Morley's. But by this time she was

embarked on the big adventure; and by the time a cable reached Calais there was no trace of Sara Lee.

During the afternoon she called up Mr. Travers at his office, and rather gathered that he did not care to use

"I just wanted to tell you that you need not bother about me any more," she said. "I am being sent over and I

He was greatly relieved. Mrs. Travers had not fully indorsed his encomiums of the girl. She had felt that no

really nice girl would travel so far on so precarious an errand, particularly when she was alone. And how

could one tell, coming from America, how her sympathies really lay? She might be of German parentage

the very worst sort, because they spoke American. It was easy enough to change a name.

Nevertheless, Mr. Travers felt a trifle low in his mind when he hung up the receiver. He said twice to himself:

"Twenty pounds!" And at last he put four sovereigns in an envelope and sent them to her anonymously by

messenger. Sara Lee guessed whence they came, but she respected the manner of the gift and did not thank

She was very carefully searched at the railway station that night and found that her American Red Cross

button, which had come with her dollar subscription to the association, made the matron inspector rather

kindly inclined. Nevertheless, she took off Sara Lee's shoes, and ran over the lining of her coat, and quite

"I shouldn't be nervous, miss," she said. "It's a chance, of course, but they have not done much damage yet."

It was after midnight then, and a cold fog made the station a gloomy thing of blurred yellow lights and raw

chill. A few people moved about, mostly officers in uniform. Half a dozen men in civilian clothes eyed her as

she passed through the gates; Scotland Yard, but she did not know. And once she thought she saw Henri, but

he walked away into the shadows and disappeared. The train, looking as absurdly small and light as all

English trains do, was waiting out in the shed. There were no porters, and Sara Lee carried her own bag.

She felt quite sure she had been mistaken about Henri, for of course he would have come and carried it for

The train was cold and quiet. When it finally moved out it was under way before she knew that it was going.

It was a very cold and shivering Sara Lee who curled up, alone in her compartment, and stared hard at

Harvey's ring to keep her courage up. But a curious thing had happened. Harvey gave her no moral support.

He brought her only disapproval. She found herself remembering none of the loving things he had said to her,

Perhaps it was the best thing for her, after all. For a sort of dogged determination to go through with it all, at

So far it had all been busy enough, but not comfortable. She was cold, and she had eaten almost nothing all

day. As the hours went on and the train slid through the darkness she realized that she was rather faint. The

steam pipes, only warm at the start, were entirely cold by one o'clock, and by two Sara Lee was sitting on her

The train moved quietly, as do all English trains, with no jars and little sound. There were few lights outside,

for the towns of Eastern England were darkened, like London, against air attacks. So when she looked at the

window she saw only her own reflection, white and wideeyed, above Aunt Harriet's fur neckpiece.

In the next compartment an officer was snoring, but she did not close her eyes. Perhaps, for that last hour,

some of the glow that had brought her so far failed her. She was not able to think beyond Folkestone, save

occasionally, and that with a feeling that it should not be made so difficult to do a kind and helpful thing.

At a quarter before three the train eased down. In the same proportion Sara Lee's pulse went up. A long

period of crawling along, a stop or two, but no resultant opening of the doors; and at last, in a cold rain and a

More officers than she had suspected, a few women, got out. The latter Sara Lee's experience on the steamer

enabled her to place; buyers mostly, and Americans, on their way to Paris, blockade or no blockade, because

the American woman must be well and smartly gowned and hatted. A man with a mourning band on his

The officers lighted cigarettes. The civilians formed a line on the jetty under the roof of the shed, and waited,

passports in hand, before a door that gleamed with yellow light. Faces looked pale and anxious. The blockade

As if defiantly the Boulogne boat, near at hand, was ablaze, on the shore side at least, with lights. Stewards

came and went. Beyond it lay the harbor, dark and mysterious save where, from somewhere across, a

"It's lifting, dearie," answered a weary voice behind her. "The wind is carrying it away."

When Sara Lee's turn came she was ready. A group of men in civilian clothes, seated about a long table,

looked her over carefully. Her passports moved deliberately from hand to hand. A long business, and the

baby wailing harder than ever. But the office was at least warm. Some of her failing courage came back as

she moved, following her papers, round the table. They were given back to her at last, and she went out. She

Suitcase in hand she wandered down the stone jetty. The Boulogne boat she passed, and kept on. At the very

end, dark and sinister, lay another boat. It had no lights. The tide was in, and its deck lay almost flush with

the pier. Sara Lee walked on toward it until a voice spoke to her out of the darkness and near at hand.

The petty officer he was a petty officer, though Sara Lee had never heard the term was inclined to be

suspicious. Under excuse of lighting his pipe he struck a match, and Sara Lee's young figure stood out in full

This time, bewildered and uneasy, she certainly saw Henri. But he ignored her. He was alone, and smoking

one of his interminable cigarettes. He had not said he was crossing, and why had he not spoken to her? He

wandered past down the pier, and she lost him in the shadows. When he came back he paused near her, and at

He carried her suitcase back, and stooping over to place it at her feet he said: "I shall send him on board with

He left her at once. The passengers for Boulogne were embarking now. A silent lot, they disappeared into the

warmth and brightness of the little boat and were lost. No one paid any attention to Sara Lee standing in the

Soon Henri came back. He walked briskly and touched his cap as he passed. He went aboard the Boulogne

Sara Lee watched him out of sight, in a very real panic. He had been something real and tangible in that

shadowy place something familiar in an unfamiliar world. But he was gone. She threw up her head.

So once more Sara Lee picked up her suitcase and went down the pier. Now she was unchallenged. What

lurking figure might he on the dark deck of the Calais boat she could not tell. That was the chance she was to

take. The gangway was still out, and as quietly as possible she went aboard. The Boulogne boat had suddenly

gone dark, and she heard the churning of the screw. With the extinction of the lights on the other boat came at

last deeper night to her aid. A few steps, a stumble, a gasp and she was on board the forbidden ship.

She turned forward, according to her instructions, where the overhead deck made below an even deeper

shadow. Henri had said that there were cabins there, and that the chance was of finding an unlocked one. If

they were all locked she would be discovered at dawn, and arrested. And Sara Lee was not a war

correspondent. She was not accustomed to arrest. Indeed she had a deep conviction that arrest in her case

As she stood there, breathless and listening, the Boulogne boat moved out. She heard the wash against the

jetty, felt the rolling of its waves. But being on the landward side she could not see the faint gleam of a

cigarette that marked Henri's anxious figure at the rail. So long as the black hulk of the Calais boat was

visible, and long after indeed, Henri stood there, outwardly calm but actually shaken by many fears. She had

looked so small and young; and who could know what deviltry lurked abroad that night?

He had not gone with her because it was necessary that he be in Boulogne the next morning. And also, the

So he stood by the rail and looked back and said a wordless little prayer that if there was trouble it come to

his boat and not to the other. Which might very considerably have disturbed the buyers had they known of it

Sara Lee stood in the shadows and listened. There were voices overhead, from the bridge. A door opened

onto the deck and threw out a ray of light. Some one came out and went on shore, walking with brisk ringing

steps. And then at last she put down her bag and tried door after door, without result.

The man who had gone ashore called another. The gangway was drawn in. The engines began to vibrate

under foot. Sara Lee, breathless and terrified, stood close to a cabin door and remained immovable. At one

moment it seemed as if a seaman was coming forward to where she stood. But he did not come.

The Calais boat was waiting until the other steamer had got well out of the harbor. The fog had lifted, and the

searchlight was moving over the surface. It played round the channel steamer without touching it. But none of

At last the lights of the quay began to recede. The little boat rocked slightly in its own waves as it edged

away. It moved slowly through the shipping and out until, catching the swell of the channel, it shot ahead at

For an hour Sara Lee stood there. The channel wind caught her and tore at her skirts until she was almost

frozen. And finally, in sheer desperation, she worked her way round to the other side. She saw no one. Save

On the other side she found an open door and stumbled into the tiny dark deck cabin, as chilled and

frightened a philanthropist as had ever crossed that old and tricky and soured bit of seaway. And there, to be

frank, she forgot her fright in as bitter a tribute of seasickness as even the channel has ever exacted.

She had locked herself in, and she fell at last into an exhausted sleep. When she wakened and peered out

through the tiny window it was gray winter dawn. The boat was quiet, and before her lay the quay of Calais

and the Gare Maritime. A gangway was out and a hurried survey showed no one in sight.

Sara Lee picked up her suitcase and opened the door. The fresh morning air revived her, but nevertheless it

was an extremely pale young woman who, obeying Henri's instructions, went ashore that morning in the gray

dawn unseen, undisturbed and unqestioned. But from the moment she appeared on the gangway until the

double glass doors of the Gare Maritime closed behind her this apparently calm young woman did not breathe

at all. She arrived, indeed, with lungs fairly collapsed and her heart entirely unreliable.

A woman clerk was asleep at a desk. Sara Lee roused her to half wakefulness, no interest and extremely poor

English. A drowsy porter led her up a staircase and down an endless corridor. Then at last he was gone, and

Now up to this point Sara Lee's mind had come to rest at Calais. She must get there; after that the other things

would need to be worried over. Henri had already in their short acquaintance installed himself as the central

figure of this strange and amazing interlude not as a goodlooking young soldier surprisingly fertile in

expedients, but as a sort of agent of providence, by whom and through whom things were done.

And Henri had said she was to go to the Gare Maritime at Calais and make herself comfortable if she got

Sara Lee therefore took a hot bath, though hardly a satisfactory one, for there was no soap and she had

brought none. She learned later on to carry soap with her everywhere. So she soaked the chill out of her slim

body and then dressed. The room was cold, but a great exultation kept her warm. She had run the blockade,

she had escaped the War Office which, by the way, was looking her up almost violently by that time, via

the censor. It had found the trunk she left at Morley's, and crossquestioned the maid into hysteria and

here she was, safe in France, the harbor of Calais before her, and here and there strangelooking war craft

taking on coal. Destroyers, she learned later. Her ignorance was rather appalling at first.

It was all unreal the room with its cold steam pipes, the heavy window hangings, the very words on the hot

and cold taps in the bathroom. A great vessel moved into the harbor. As it turned she saw its name printed on

its side in huge letters, and the flag, also painted, of a neutral country a hopedfor protection against

After a time she thought of food, but rather hopelessly. Her attempts to get savon from a stupid boy had

produced nothing more useful than a flow of unintelligible French and no soap whatever. She tried a

pantomime of washing her hands, but to the boy she had appeared to be merely wringing them. And, as a

great many females were wringing their hands in France those days, he had gone away, rather sorry for her.

When hunger drove her to the bell again he came back and found her with her little phrase book in her hands,

feverishly turning the pages. She could find plenty of sentences such as "Garcon, vous avez renverse du vin

sur ma robe," but not an egg lifted its shining pate above the pages. Not cereal. Not fruit. Not even the word

Long, long after ward Sara Lee found a quite delightful breakfast hidden between two pages that were stuck

"Donnezmoi," began Sara Lee, and turned the pages rapidly, "this; do you see?" She had found roast beef.

The boy observed stolidly, in French, that it was not ready until noon. She was able to make out, from his

" Good gracious!" she said, ravenous and exasperated. "Go and get me some bread and coffee, anyhow." She

That was the tableau that Henri found when, after a custom that may be war or may be Continental, he had

There was a twinkle in his blue eyes as he bowed before her and a vast relief too.

"So you are here!" he said in a tone of satisfaction. He had put in an extremely bad night, even for him, by

whom nights were seldom wasted in a bed. While he was with her something of her poise had communicated

itself to him. He had felt the confidence, in men and affairs, that American girls are given as a birthright. And

her desire for service he had understood as a year or two ago he could not have understood. But he had stood

by the rail staring north, and cursing himself for having placed her in danger during the entire crossing.

There was nothing about him that morning, however to show his bad hours. He was debonnaire and smiling.

"I am famishing," said Sara Lee. "And there are no eggs in this book none whatever."

"I just want food. Almost anything will do. I asked for eggs because they can come quickly."

Henri turned to the boy and sent him off with a rapid order. Then: "May I come in?" he said.

Sara Lee cast an uneasy glance over the room. It was extremely tidy, and unmistakably it was a bedroom. But

though her color rose she asked him in. After all, what did it matter? To have refused would have looked

priggish, she said to herself. And as a matter of fact one of the early lessons she learned in France was learned

that morning that though convention had had to go, like many other things in the war, men who were

"Now, please tell me," he said. "I have been most uneasy. On the quay last night you looked frightened."

"But," said Sara Lee slowly, "II can't be on your hands, you know. You must have many things to do. If

you are going to have to order my meals and all that, I'm going to he a dreadful burden."

Henri dismissed that with a gesture. She could not, he felt, be stupid about anything. He went to the window

and looked out. The destroyers were still coaling, and a small cargo was being taken off the boat at the quay.

The rain was over, and in the early sunlight an officer in blue tunic, red breeches and black cavalry boots was

taking the air, his head bent over his chest. Not a detail of the scene escaped him.

"I have agreed to find the right place for you," he said thoughtfully. "There is one, but I think " He

"Perhaps, for your work. But what of you? These brutes they shell far and wide. One can never be sure."

"Who allowed you to come, alone, like this?" he demanded. "Is there no one who objected?"

Henri looked at her, and followed her eyes to Harvey's ring. He said nothing, however, but he went over and

"You must have food quickly," he said in a rather flat voice. "You are looking tired and pale."

A sense of unreality was growing on Sara Lee. That she should be alone in France with a man she had never

seen three days before; that she knew nothing whatever about that man; that, for the present at least, she was

utterly and absolutely dependent on him, even for the food she ate it was all of a piece with the night's

When the breakfast tray came Henri was again at the window and silent. And Sara Lee saw that it was laid

for two. She was a little startled, but the businesslike way in which the young officer drew up two chairs and

held one out for her made protest seem absurd. And the flatfaced boy, who waited, looked unshocked and

It was not until she had had some coffee that Henri followed up his line of thought.

"So the fiance did not approve? It is not difficult to understand. There is always danger, for there are

German aeroplanes even in remote places. And you are very young. You still wish to establish yourself,

"Would it be a comfort to cable your safe arrival in France to the flance?" When he saw her face he smiled.

And if it was a rather heroic smile it was none the less friendly. "I see. What shall I say? Or will you write

So Sara Lee, vastly cheered by two cups of coffee, an egg, and a very considerable portion of bread and

butter, wrote her cable. It was to be brief, for cables cost money. It said, "Safe. Well. Love." And Henri, who

seemed to have strange and ominous powers, sent it almost immediately. Total cost, as reported to Sara Lee,

"We shall cable quite often," he said. "He will be anxious. And I think he has a right to know."

"And now," he said, when he had gravely allowed Sara Lee to pay her half of the breakfast, "we must arrange

It took time. Sara Lee, growing accustomed now to little rooms entirely filled with men and typewriters, went

from one office to another, walking along the narrow pavements with Henri, through streets filled with

soldiers. Once they drew aside to let pass a procession of Belgian refugees, those who had held to their

village homes until bombardment had destroyed them stout peasant women in short skirts and with huge

bundles, old men, a few young ones, many children. The terror of the early flight was not theirs, but there was

in all of them a sort of sodden hopelessness that cut Sara Lee to the heart. In an irregular column they walked

along, staring ahead but seeing nothing. Even the children looked old and tired.

"My people," said Henri. "Simple country folk, and going to England, where they will grieve for the things

that are gone their fields and their sons. The old ones will die, quickly, of homesickness. It is difficult to

The final formalities seemed to offer certain difficulties. Henri, who liked to do things quickly and like a

prince, flushed with irritation. He drew himself up rather haughtily in reply to one question, and glanced

It was only after a whispered sentence to the man at the head of the table that the paper was finally signed.

"But I simply must not take all your time," she said, looking up anxiously. "I begin to realize how foolhardy

the whole thing is. I meant well, but it is you who are doing everything; not I."

Here were more things to do. Sara Lee's money must be exchanged at a bank for French gold. She had three

hundred dollars, and it had been given her in a tiny brown canvas bag. And then there was the matter of going

from Calais toward the Front. She had expected to find a train, but there were no trains. All cars were being

"Mademoiselle," he said, "I have been requested to take you to a place where you may render us the service

we so badly need. For the present that is my duty, and nothing else. So if you will accept the offer of my car,

Long, long afterward, Sara Lee found a snapshot of Henri's car, taken by a lighthearted British officer.

Found it and sat for a long time with it in her hand, thinking and remembering that first day she saw it, in the

sun at Calais. A long low car it was, once green, but now roughly painted gray. But it was not the crude

painting, significant as it was, that brought so close the thing she was going to. It was that the car was but a

shell of a car. The mud guards were crumpled up against the side. Body and hood were pitted with shrapnel.

A door had been shot away, and the wind shield was but a frame set round with broken glass. Even the

Henri was having a double enjoyment. He was watching Sara Lee's face and his chauffeur's remaining eye.

"But fast; eh, Jean?" he said to the chauffeur. The man nodded and said something in French. It was probably

"Jean is reminding me," he said gayly, "that it is forbidden to officers to take a lady along the road that we

"Mademoiselle has come from America to help us, Jean," he said quietly. "And now for Dunkirk."

The road from Dunkirk to Calais was well guarded in those days. From Nieuport for some miles inland only

the shattered remnant of the Belgian Army held the line. For the cry "On to Paris!" the Germans had

So, on French soil at least, the road was well guarded. A few miles in the battered car, then a slowing up, a

showing of passports, the clatter of a great chain as it dropped to the road, a lowering of leveled rifles, and a

Henri sat with the driver and talked in a low tone. Sometimes he sat quiet, looking ahead. He seemed,

somehow, older, more careworn. His boyishness had gone. Now and then he turned to ask if she was

comfortable, but in the intervals she felt that he had entirely forgotten her. Once, at something Jean said, he

got out a pocket map and went over it carefully. It was a long time after that before he turned to see if she was

Sara Lee sat forward and watched everything. She saw little evidence of war, beyond the occasional sentries

and chains. Women were walking along the roads. Children stopped and pointed, smiling, at the battered car.

"I find that I shall have to leave you in Dunkirk," he said. "A matter of a day only, probably. But I ill see

Sara Lee learned one thing that day, learned it as some women do learn, by the glance of an eye, the tone of a

voice. The chauffeur adored Henri. His one unbandaged eye stole moments from the road to glance at him.

When he spoke, while Henri read his map his very voice betrayed him. And while she pondered the thing,

womanfashion they drew into the square of Dunkirk, where the statue of Jean Bart, pirate and privateer

stared down at this new procession of war which passed daily and nightly under his cold eyes.

Jean and a porter carried in her luggage. Henri and a voluble and smiling Frenchwoman showed her to her

room. She felt like an island of silence in a rapidrolling sea of French. The Frenchwoman threw open the

A great room with high curtained windows; a huge bed with a faded gilt canopy and heavy draperies; a

wardrobe as vast as the bed; and for a toilet table an enormous mirror reaching to the ceiling and with a

Henri named an extremely low figure an exact fourth, to be accurate, of its real cost. A surprising person

Henri, with his worn uniform and his capacity for kindly mendacity. And seeing something in the

Frenchwoman's face that perhaps he had expected, he turned to her almost fiercely:

"You are to understand, madame, that this lady has been placed in my care by authority that will not be

That was all, but was enough. And from that time on Sara Lee Kennedy, of Ohio, was called, in the tiny box

Henri did a characteristic and kindly thing for Sara Lee before he left that evening on one of the many

mysterious journeys that he was to make during the time Sara Lee knew him. He came to her doors menus in

hand, and painstakingly ordered for her a dinner for that night, and the three meals for the day following.

He made no suggestion of dining with her that evening. Indeed watching him from her small table Sara Lee

decided that he had put her entirely out of his mind. He did not so much as glance at her. Save the cashier at

her boxedin desk and money drawer, she was the only woman in that room full of officers. Quite certainly

Henri was the only man who did not find some excuse for glancing in her direction.

But finishing early, he paused by the cashier's desk to pay for his meal, and then he gave Sara Lee the stiffest

She felt hurt. Alone in her great room, the curtains drawn by order of the police, lest a ray of light betray the

town to eyes in the air, she went carefully over the hours she had spent with Henri that day, looking for a

cause of offense. She must have hurt him or he would surely have stopped to speak to her.

Perhaps already he was finding her a burden. She flushed with shame when she remembered about the meals

he had had to order for her, and she sat up in her great bed until late, studying by candlelight such phrases as:

"Il y a une erreur dans La note," and " Garcon, quels fruits avezvous?" She tried to write to Harvey that

night, but she gave it up at last. There was too much he would not understand. She could not write frankly

without telling of Henri, and to this point everything had centered about Henri. It all rather worried her,

because there was nothing she was ashamed of, nothing she should have had to conceal. She had yet to learn,

had Sara Lee, that many of the concealments of life are based not on wrongdoing but on fear of

So she got as far as: "Dearest Harvey: I am here in a hotel at Dunkirk" and then stopped, fairly engulfed in

a wave of homesickness. Not so much for Harvey as for familiar things Uncle James in his chair by the fire,

with the phonograph playing "My Little Gray Home in the West"; her own white bedroom; the sun on the red

geraniums in the diningroom window; the voices of happy children wandering home from school.

She got up and went to the window, first blowing out the candle. Outside, the town lay asleep, and from a

gate in the old wall a sentry with a bugle blew a quiet "All's well." From somewhere near, on top of the

mairie perhaps, where eyes all night searched the sky for danger, came the same trumpet call of safety for the

For two days the girl was alone. There was no sign of Henri. She had nothing to read, and her eyes, watching

hour after hour the panorama that passed through the square under her window, searched vainly for his

battered gray car. In daytime the panorama was chiefly of motor lorries she called them trucks piled high

with supplies, often fodder for the horses in that vague district beyond ammunition and food. Now and then a

battery rumbled through, its gunners on the limbers, detached, with folded arms; and always there were

Sometimes, from her window, she saw the market people below, in their striped redandwhite booths,

staring up at the sky. She would look up, too, and there would be an aeroplane sliding along, sometimes so

But it was the ambulances that Sara Lee looked for. Mostly they came at night, a steady stream of them.

Sometimes they moved rapidly. Again one would be going very slowly, and other machines would circle

impatiently round it and go on. A silent, grim procession in the moonlight it was, and it helped the girl to bear

Inside those long gray cars with the red crosses painted on the tops a symbol of mercy that had ceased to

protect inside those cars were wounded men, men who had perhaps lain for hours without food or care.

Surely, surely it was right that she had come. The little she could do must count in the great total. She twisted

"You will forgive me when you know, dear," was the message. "It is so terrible! So pitiful!"

Yet during the day the square was gay enough. Officers in spurs clanked across, wide capes blowing in the

wind. Common soldiers bought fruit and paper bags of fried potatoes from the booths. Countless dogs fought

under the feet of passersby, and over all leered the sardonic face of ean Bart, pirate and privateer.

Sara Lee went out daily, but never far. And she practiced French with the maid, after this fashion:

"Taies d'oreiller," when the pillows came. So Sara Lee called pillows by the name of their slips from that time

forward! Came a bright hour when she rang the bell for the boy and asked for matches, which she certainly

On the second night Sara Lee slept badly. At two o'clock she heard a sound in the hall, and putting on her

kimono, opened the door. On a stiff chair outside, snoring profoundly, sat Jean, fully dressed.

"All sorts of people come to this place, mademoiselle. But few ladies. It is best that I remain here."

She could not move him. He had remained standing while she spoke to him, and now he yawned, striving to

conceal it. Sara Lee felt very uncomfortable, but Jean's attitude and voice alike were firm. She thanked him

Lying there in the darkness, a warm glow of gratitude to Henri, and a feeling of her safety in his care,

wrapped her like a mantle. She wondered drowsily if Harvey would ever have thought of all the small things

While she was breakfasting the next morning there was a tap at the door, and thinking it the maid she called

He smiled almost sheepishly. Sara Lee, who had no subtlety but a great deal of intuition, felt that there was a

certain relief in the smile, as though Jean, having had no message from his master, was pleased that she had

none. Which was true enough, at that. Also she felt that Jean's one eye was inspecting her closely, which was

also true. A new factor had come into Henri's life by Jean's reasoning, a new and dangerous one. And there

Highly dangerous, Jean reflected in the back of his head as he backed out with a bow. A young girl unafraid

of the morning sun and sitting at a little breakfast table as fresh as herself that was a picture for a

Jean forgot for a moment his anxiety for Henri's safety in his fear for his peace of mind. For a doubt had been

removed. The girl was straight. Jean's one sophisticated eye had grasped that at once. A good girl, alone, and

far from home! And Henri, like all soldiers, womanhungry for good women, for unpainted skins and clear

All there, behind that little breakfast table which might so pleasantly have been laid for two.

Jean took a walk that morning, and stood staring for twenty minutes into a clock maker's window, full of

At two in the afternoon Sara Lee saw Henri's car come into the square. It was, if possible, more dilapidated

than before, and he came like a gray whirlwind, scattering people and dogs out of his way. Almost before he

had had time to enter the hotel Sara Lee heard him in the hall, and the next moment he was bowing before

"I have been longer than I expected," he explained. "Have you been quite comfortable?"

Sara Lee, however, was gazing at him with startled eyes. He was dirty, unshaven, and his eyes looked hollow

and bloodshot. From his neck to his heels he was smeared with mud, and his tidy tunic was torn into ragged

"I? No, mademoiselle. There has been no battle." His eyes left her and traveled over the room. "They are

"Everything is splendid," said Sara Lee. "If you won't tell me how you got into that condition, at least you can

He went away then, and Sara Lee got out her sewing things. The tunic came soon, carefully brushed and very

And up pstairs in a small room with two beds Sara Lee might have been surprised to find Jean, the chauffeur,

lying on one, while Henri shaved himself beside the other. For Jean, of the ragged uniform and the patch over

one eye, was a count of Belgium, and served Henri because he loved him. And because, too, he was no longer

Sometime a book will be written about the Jeans of this war, the great friendships it has brought forth

between men. And not the least of its stories will be that of this Jean of the one eye. But its place is not here.

And perhaps there will be a book about the Henris, also. But not for a long time, and even then with care. For

the heroes of one department of an army in the field live and die unsung. Their bravest exploits are buried in

After he had bathed and shaved, Henri sat down at a tiny table and wrote. He drew a plan also, from a rough

one before him. Then he took a match and burned the original drawing until it was but charred black ashes.

Down below, Sara Lee sat with Henri's ragged tunic on her lap and stitched carefully. Sometime, she

reflected, she would be mending worn garments for another man, now far away. A little flood of tenderness

came over her. So helpless these men! There was so much to do for them! And soon, please God, she would

be helping other tired and weary men, with food, and perhaps a word when she had acquired some French

She dined alone that night, as usual. Henri did not appear, though she had sent what she suspected was his

only tunic back to him neatly mended at five o'clock. As a matter of fact Henri was sound asleep. He had

meant to rest only for an hour a body that was crying aloud with fatigue. But Jean, coming in quietly, had

found him sleeping like a child, and had put his own blanket over him and left him. Henri slept until morning,

when Jean, coming up from his vigil outside the American girl's door, found him waking and rested, and rang

Jean sat down on the edge of his bed and put on his shoes and puttees. He was a taciturn man, but now he had

"What is it?" he asked, his arms under his head. "Come, let us have it! It is, of course, about the American

"I am not an idiot," Jean growled. "You do not know what you are doing. I do. She is young and lonely. You

are young and not unattractive to women. Already she turns pale when I so much as ask if she has heard from

"And you thought I might send her word, and not you!" Henri's voice was offended. He lay back while the

"Let me tell you something," he said when the boy had gone. "She is betrothed to an American. She wears a

But though Henri laughed Jean remained grave and brooding. For Henri had not said what Sara Lee already

It was later in the morning that Henri broached the subject again. They were in the courtyard of an old house,

Henri named the little town. Like Henri's family name, it must not be told. Too many things happened there,

and perhaps it is even now Henri's headquarters. For that portion of the line has changed very little.

"If you will be silent I shall explain a plan," Henri said in a cautious tone. "She will make soup, with help

which we shall find. And if coming in for refreshments a soldier shall leave a letter for me it is natural, is it

Yet Jean's suspicions were not entirely allayed. The plan had its advantages. It was important that Henri

receive certain reports, and already the hotel whispered that Henri was of the secret service. It brought him

So Jean accepted the plan, but with reservation. And it was not long afterward that he said to Sara Lee, in

But Sara Lee only said, "I'm sorry, Jean; you'll have to speak English to me for a while, I'm afraid."

And though he watched her for five minutes she did not put her hand to her neck.

However, that was later on. That afternoon Henri spent an hour with the Minister of War. And at the end of

that time he said: "Thank you, Baron. I think you will not regret it. America must learn the truth, and how

It is as well to state, however, that he left the Minister of War with the undoubted impression that Miss Sara

Sara Lee packed her own suitcase that afternoon, doing it rather nervously because Henri was standing in the

room by the window waiting for it. He had come in as matteroffactly as Harvey had entered the parlor at

Aunt Harriet's, except that he carried in his arms some six towels, a cake of soap and what looked

"The house I have under consideration," he said, "has little to recommend it but the building, and even that

"There are but two. And Jean has placed blankets in the car. You must have a pillow also."

"Would you have thought of these?" he demanded triumphantly. "You you think only of soup and tired

And there was a touch of tenderness in his voice. Sara Lee felt it and trembled slightly. He was so fine, and

he must not think of her that way. It was not real. It couldn't be. Men were lonely here, where everything was

hard and cruel. They wanted some of the softness of life, and all of kindness and sweetness that she could

give should be Henri's. But she must make it clear that there could never be anything more.

"I know that garment," he said boyishly. "Do you remember the night you wore it? And how we wandered in

"I would like you to see this," she said a little breathlessly. "It is the man I am to marry."

For a moment she thought Henri was not going to take it. But he came, rather slowly, and held out his hand

for it. He went with it to the window and stood there for some time looking down at it.

Sara Lee had expected some other comment, but he made none. He put the photograph very quietly on the

"I shall send for your luggage, mademoiselle. And you will find me at the car outside, waiting."

And so it was that a very silent Henri sat with Jean going out to that strange land which was to be Sara Lee's

home for many months. And a very silent Sara Lee, flanked with pillow and blankets, who sat back alone and

FROM Dunkirk to the Front, the road, after the Belgian line was passed, was lightly guarded. Henri came out

"We have not many men," he said. "And those that remain are holding the line. It is very weary, our army."

Now at home Uncle James had thought very highly of the Belgian Army. He had watched the fight they

made, and he had tried to interest Sara Lee in it. But without much result. She had generally said: "Isn't it

wonderful!" or "horrible," as the case might be, and put out of her mind as soon as possible the ringing words

he had been reading. But she had not forgotten, she found. They came back to her as she rode through that

"Yes. But not for myself. I am just homesick for all the people who have lost their homes. You and Jean,

"Some day I shall tell you about my home and what has happened to it," he said gravely. "Not now. It is not

pleasant. But you must remember this: We are going back home, we Belgians." And after a little pause: "Just

He lapsed into silence after that, and Sara Lee, stealing a glance at him, saw his face set and hard. She had a

Jean did not like Henri's shift to the rear of the car. He drove with a sort of irritable feverishness, until Henri

"It is not difficult to believe," growled Jean. But he slackened his pace somewhat.

So far the road had been deserted. Now they had come up to a stream of traffic flowing slowly toward the

Front. Armored cars, looking tall and topheavy, rumbled and jolted along. Many lorries, one limousine

containing a general, a few Paris buses, all smeared a dingy gray and filled with French soldiers, numberless

and nondescript open machines, here and there a horsedrawn vehicle these filled the road. In and out

among them Jean threaded his way, while Sara Lee grew crimson with the effort to see it all, and Henri sat

At a crossroads they were halted by troops who had fallen out for a rest. The men stood at ease, and stared

their fill at Sara Lee. Save for a few weary peasants, most of them had seen no women for months. But they

were respectful, if openly admiring. And their admiration of her was nothing to Sara Lee's feeling toward

them. She loved them all boys with their first straggly beards on their chins; older men, looking worn and

tired; French and Belgian; smiling and sad. But most of all, for Uncle James' sake, she loved the Belgians.

"I cannot tell you," she said breathlessly to Henri. "It is like a dream come true. And I shall help. You look

They turned into a crossroad after a time, and there in a little village Sara Lee found her new home. A strange

village indeed, unoccupied and largely destroyed. Piles of bricks and plaster lined the streets. Broken glass

was everywhere. Jean blew out a tire finally, because of the glass, and they were obliged to walk the

"A poor place, mademoiselle," Henri said as they went along. "A peaceful little town, and quite beautiful,

once. And it harbored no troops. But everything is meat for the mouths of their guns."

Sara Lee stopped and looked about her. Her heart was beating fast, but her lips were steady enough.

Steady, passionless firing was going on, not near, but far away, like low thunder before a summer storm. She

was for months to live, to eat and sleep and dream to that rumbling from the Ypres salient, to waken when it

ceased or to look up from her work at the strange silence. But it was new to her then, and terrible.

Sara Lee's heart slowed down somewhat. After all, she had asked to be near the Front. And that meant guns

"Far! It is not very far. Not so far as I would wish, mademoiselle. But, to do what you desire, it is the best I

A quarter of a mile beyond those poplar trees. He indicated on a slight rise a row of great trees broken

somewhat but not yet reduced to the twisted skeletons they were to become later on. In a long line they faced

the enemy like sentinels, winterquiet but dauntless, and behind them lay the wreck of the little village, quiet

"But, yes, mademoiselle. At night they come up from the trenches, and fresh troops take their places. They

come up this street and go on to wherever they are to rest. And when they find that a house of mercy is here

"You will learn. And in the meantime, mademoiselle, I have taken the liberty of finding you a servant a

Something that had been in the back of Sara Lee's mind for some time suddenly went away. She had been

thinking of Aunt Harriet and the Ladies' Aid Society of the Methodist Church. She had, in fact, been

wondering how they would feel when they learned that she was living alone, the only woman among

But Henri said nothing. He had indeed thought of everything with a vengeance, with the net result that he was

These Americans were strange. An American girl would cross the seas, and come here alone with him a

man and human. And she would take for granted that he would do what he was doing for love of his kind

which was partly true; and she would be beautiful and sweet and amiable and quite unselfconscious. And

then she would go back home, warm of heart with gratitude, and marry the man of the picture.

The village had but one street, and that deserted and in ruins. Behind its double row of houses, away from the

enemy, lay the fields, a muddy canal and more poplar trees. And from far away, toward Ypres, there came

constantly that somewhat casual booming of artillery which marked the first winter of the war.

The sound of the guns had first alarmed, then interested Sara Lee. It was detached then, far away. It meant

little to her. It was only later, when she saw some of the results of the sounds she heard, that they became

significant. But this is not a tale of the wounding of men. There are many such. This is the story of a little

house of mercy, and of a girl with a dauntless spirit, and of two men who loved her. Only that.

The maid Henri had found was already in the house, sweeping. Henri presented her to Sara Lee, and he also

Sara Lee looked about her. With the trifling exception that there was no roof, it was whole. And the roof was

not necessary, for the floors of the upper story served instead. There was a narrow passage with a room on

"Your bedroom," he said. "Well furnished, as you will see. It should be, since there has been brought here all

His blacker mood had fallen away before her naive delight. He went about smiling boyishly, showing her the

kettles in the kitchen; the supply, already so rare, of firewood; the little stove. But he stiffened somewhat

But she was a little sad as she followed Henri about, he volubly expatiating on such advantages as plenty of

air owing to the absence of a roof; and the attraction of the stove, which he showed much like a salesman

anxious to make a sale. "Such a stove!" he finished contentedly. "It will make soup even in your absence,

mademoiselle! Our peasants eat much soup; therefore it is what you would call a trained stove."

Before Sara Lee's eyes came a picture of Harvey and the Leete house, its white dining room, its bay window

for plants, its comfortable charm and prettiness. And Harvey's face, as he planned it for her anxious, pleading,

loving. She drew a long breath. If Henri noticed her abstraction he ignored it. He was all over the little house.

One moment he was instructing Marie volubly, to her evident confusion. On Rene, the guard, he descended

like a young cyclone, with warnings for mademoiselle's safety and comfort. He was everywhere, sitting on

the bed to see if it was soft, tramping hard on the upper floor to discover if any plaster might loosen below,

When he came down it was to say: "You are not entirely alone in the village, after all, mademoiselle. The

He found Sara Lee, however, still depressed. She was sitting in a low chair in the kitchen gazing thoughtfully

"I am here," she said. "And here is the house, and a stove, and everything. But there are no shops; and what

Then suddenly they both laughed, the joyous ringing laugh of ridiculous youth, which can see its own

"I thought of water," he said, "and a house, and firewood, and kettles and furniture. And there I ceased

It was dusk now. Marie lifted the lid from the stove, and a warm red glow of reflected light filled the little

kitchen. It was warm and cozy; the kettle sang like the purring of a cat. And something else that had troubled

"I wonder," she said, "if you are doing all this only because I well, because I persuaded you." Which she

"A Belgian soldier always smiles. Even when he is fighting." His voice had lost its gayety and had taken on a

deeper note. "Mademoiselle, I have brought you here, where I can think of no other woman who would have

the courage to come, because you are needed. I cannot promise you entire safety" his mouth tightened

"but I can promise you work and gratitude. Such gratitude, mademoiselle, as you may never know again."

That reassured her. But in her practical mind the matter of supplies loomed large. She brought the matter up

"It is very simple," Jean said to him in French. "You have no other duties of course; so each day you shall

buy in the market place at Dunkirk, with American money. And I shall become a delivery boy and bring out

Henri smiled back at him cheerfully. "An excellent plan, Jean," he said. "Not every day, but frequently."

However, there was the immediate present to think of, and while Jean thawed his hands at the fire and Sara

He came back in a half hour, carrying in a small basket butter, eggs, bread and potatoes.

"The miller!" he explained cheerfully to Sara Lee. "He has still a few hens, and hidden somewhere a cow. We

can have milk is there a pail for Marie to take to the mill? and bread and an omelet. That is a meal!"

There was but one lamp, which hung over the kitchen stove. The room across from Sara Lee's bedroom

contained a small round dining table and chairs. Sara Lee, enveloped in a large pinafore apron, made the

omelet in the kitchen. Marie brought a pail of fresh milk. Henri, with a towel over his left arm, and in absurd

mimicry of a Parisian waiter, laid the table; and Jean, dour Jean, caught a bit of the infection, and finding four

Standing in corners, smiling, useless against the cheerful English that flowed from the kitchen stove to the

dining room and back again, were Rene and Marie. It was of no use to attempt to help. Did the fire burn low,

it was the young officer who went out for fresh wood. But Rene could not permit that twice. He brought in

Henri was absurdly happy again. He would come to the door gravely, with Sara Lee's little phrase book in

"'Shall we have duck or chicken?' 'Where can we get a good dinner at a moderate price?' 'Waiter, you have

spilled wine on my dress.' 'Will you have a cigar?' 'No, thank you. I prefer a pipe.'"

And Sara Lee beat up the eggs and found, after a bad moment, some salt in a box, and then poured her omelet

into the pan. She was very anxious that it be a good omelet. She must make good her claim as a cook or

It was a divine omelet. Even Jean said so. They sat, the three of them, in the cold little dining room and never

knew that it was cold, and they ate prodigious quantities of omelet and bread and butter, and bully beef out of

Even Jean thawed at last, under the influence of food and Sara Lee. Before the meal was over he was

planning how to get her supplies to her and making notes on a piece of paper as to what she would need at

once. They adjourned to Sara Lee's bedroom, where Marie had kindled a fire in the little iron stove, and sat

there in the warmth with two candles, still planning. By that time Sara Lee had quite forgotten that at home

That was the first time Sara Lee had ever heard the quiet shuffling step of tired men, leaving their trenches

under cover of darkness. Henri threw his military cape over her shoulders and she stood in the dark doorway,

The empty street was no longer empty. From gutter to gutter flowed a stream of men, like a sluggish river

which narrowed where a fallen house partly filled the way; not talking, not singing, just moving, bent under

their heavy and mudcovered equipment. Here and there the clack of wooden sabots on the cobbles told of

one poor fellow not outfitted with leather shoes. The light of a match here and there showed some few lucky

enough to have still remaining cigarettes, and revealed also, in the immediate vicinity, a white bandage or

two. Some few, recognizing Henri's officer's cap, saluted. Most of them stumbled on, too weary to so much

Nothing that Sara Lee had dreamed of war was like this. This was dreary and sodden and hopeless. Those

fresh troops at the crossroads that day had been blithe and smiling. There had been none of the glitter and

panoply of war, but there had been movement, the beating of a drum, the sharp cries of officers as the lines

Here there were no lines. Just such a stream of men as at home might issue at night from a coal mine, too

weary for speech. Only here they were packed together closely, and they did not speak, and some of them

"There are so many!" she whispered to Henri. "A hundred such efforts as mine would not be enough."

"Listen, mademoiselle," he said later. "You cannot do all the kind work of the world. But you can do your

part. And you will start by caring for only such as are wounded or ill. The others can go on. But every night

some twenty or thirty, or even more, will come to your door men slightly wounded or too weary to go on

without a rest. And for those there will be a chair by the fire, and something hot, or perhapps a clean bandage.

It sounds small? But in a month, think! You will have given comfort to perhaps a thousand men. You

"I alone!" she said in a queer choking voice. "And what about you? It is you who have made it possible."

But Henri was looking down the street to where the row of poplars hid what lay beyond. Far beyond a star

shell had risen above the flat fields and floated there, a pure and lovely thing, shedding its white light over the

"Like that!" Henri said to her, but in French. "Like that you are to me. Bright and shining and so soon

The girl was singularly adaptable. In a few days it was as though she had been for years in her little ruined

house. She was very happy, though there was scarcely a day when her heart was not wrung. Such youngold

She got the tales by intuition rather than by words, though she was picking up some French at that. Marie

would weep openly, at times. The most frequent story was of no news from the country held by the Germans,

of families left with nothing and probably starving. The first inquiry was always for news. Had the American

In time Sara Lee began to take notes of names and addresses, and through Mr. Travers, in London, and the

Relief Commission, in Belgium, bits of information came back. A certain family was in England at a village

in Surrey. Of another a child had died. Here was one that could not be located, and another reported

Later on Sara Lee was to find her little house growing famous, besieged by anxious soldiers who besought

her efforts, so that she used enormous numbers of stamps and a great deal of effort. But that was later on.

And when that time came she turned to the work as a refuge from her thoughts. For days were coming when

But like all big things the little house made a humble beginning. A mere handful of men, daring the gibes of

their comrades, stopped in that first night the door stood open, with its invitation of firelight and candles. But

these few went away with a strange story of a beautiful American, and hot soup, and even a cigarette

apiece. That had been Henri's contribution, the cigarettes. And soon the fame of the little house went up and

It was at night that the little house of mercy bloomed like a flower. During the daytime it was quiet, and it

was then, as time went on, that Sara Lee wrote her letters home and to England, and sent her lists of names to

be investigated. But from the beginning there was much to do. Vegetables were to be prepared for the soup,

Marie must find and bring in milk for the chocolate, Rene must lay aside his rifle and chop firewood.

One worry, however, disappeared with the days. Henri was proving a clever buyer. The money she sent in

secured marvels. Only Jean knew, or ever knew, just how much of Henri's steadily decreasing funds went to

that buying. Certainly not Sara Lee. And Jean expostulated only once to be met by such blazing fury as set

"I am doing this," Henri finished, a trifle ashamed of himself, "not for mademoiselle, but for our army. And

since when have you felt that the best we can give is too much for such a purpose?"

So supplies came in plentifully, and Sara Lee pared vegetables and sang a bit under her breath, and glowed

with good will when at night the weary vanguard of a weary little army stopped at her door and scraped the

She was very happy, and her soup was growing famous. It is true that the beef she used was not often beef,

but she did not know that, and merely complained that the meat was stringy. Now and then there was no beef

at all, and she used hares instead. On quiet days, when there was little firing beyond the poplar trees, she went

about with a basket through the neglected winter gardens of the town. There were Brussels sprouts, and

It was at night then, from seven in the evening until one, that the, little house was busiest. Word had gone out

through the trenches beyond the poplar trees that slightly wounded men needing rest before walking back to

their billets, exhausted and sick men, were welcome to the little house. It was soon necessary to give the

officers tickets for the men. Rene took them in at the door, with his rifle in the hollow of his arm, and he was

Never once in all the months of her life there did Sara Lee have an ugly word, an offensive glance. But,

though she never knew this, many half articulate and wholly earnest prayers were offered for her in those

little churches behind the lines where sometimes the men slept, and often they prayed.

She was very businesslike. She sent home to the Ladies' Aid Society a weekly record of what had been done:

So many bowls of soup; so many cups of chocolate; so many minor injuries dressed. Because, very soon, she

found first aid added to her activities. She sickened somewhat at first. Later she allowed to Marie much of the

serving of food, and in the little salle manger she had ready on the table basins, water, cotton, iodine and

"It is a matter of cleanliness," he said. "First one washes the wound and then there is the iodine. Then cotton,

Henri and Jean came often. And more than once during the first ten days Jean spent the night rolled in a

blanket by the kitchen fire, and Henri disappeared. He was always back in the morning, however, looking

dirty and very tired. Sara Lee sewed more than one rent for him, those days, but she was strangely incurious.

It was as though, where everything was strange, Henri's erratic comings and goings were but a part with the

Sara Lee had received her first letter from Harvey that day. The maid at Morley's had forwarded it to her, and

"I think I have brought you something you wish for very much," he said, looking down at her.

Afterward he could not quite understand the way she had suddenly drawn in her breath. He had no memory,

as she had, of Harvey's obstinate anger at her going, his conviction that she was doing a thing criminally

She took it into her room and closed the door. When she came out again she was composed and quiet, but

rather white. Poor Henri! He was half mad that day with jealousy. Her whiteness he construed as longing.

You may think that I have become reconciled, but I have not. If I could see any reason for it I might. But

what reason is there? So many others, older and more experienced, could do what you are doing, and more

In your letter from the steamer you tell me not to worry. Good God, Sara Lee, how can I help worrying? I do

not even know where you are! If you are in England, well and good. If you are abroad I do not want to know

it. I know these foreigners. I run into them every day. And they do not understand American women. I get

crazy when I think about it. I have had to let the Leete house go. There is not likely to be such a chance soon

again. Business is good, but I don't seem to care much about it any more. Honestly, dear, I think you have

treated me very badly. I always feel as though the people I meet are wondering if we have quarreled or what

on earth took you away on this wildgoose chase. I don't know myself, so how can I tell them?

I shall always love you, Sara Lee. I guess I'm that sort. But sometimes I wonder if, when we are married, you

will leave me again in some such uncalledfor way. I warn you now, dear, that I won't stand for it. I'm

Sara Lee wore the letter next her heart, but it did not warm her. She went through the next few hours in a sort

Henri and Jean, driving out from Dunkirk, had passed on the road ammunition trains, waiting in the road until

dark before moving on to the Front. Henri had given Sara Lee her letter, had watched jealously for its effect

on her, and then, his own face white and set, had gone on down the ruined street.

Here within the walls of a destroyed house he disappeared. The place was evidently familiar to him, for he

moved without hesitation. Broken furniture still stood in the roofless rooms, and in front of a battered bureau

Henri paused. Still whistling under his breath, he took off his uniform and donned a strange one, of greenish

gray. In the pocket of the blouse he stuffed a soft round cap of the same color. Then, resuming his cape and

Belgian cap, with its tassel over his forehead, he went out into the street again. He carried in his belt a pistol,

but it was not the one he had brought in with him. As a matter of fact, by the addition of the cap in his pocket,

Henri was at that moment in the full uniform of a lieutenant of a Bavarian infantry regiment, pistol and all.

He went down the street and along the road toward the poplars. He met the first detachment of men out of the

trenches just beyond the trees, and stepped aside into the mud to let them pass, calling a greeting to them out

"Bonsoir ! they replied, and saluted stiffly. There were few among them who did not know his voice, and

"One cannot live long who does as he does," replied a gaunt and bearded man. "But it is a fine life while it

The boy stepped out of the shuffling line and looked behind him. He could see only the glow of Henri's

The ammunition train was in the village now. It kept the center of the road, lest it should slide into the mud

on either side and be mired. The men moved out of its way into the ditch, grumbling.

The first shell fell in the neglected square. The second struck the rear wagons of the ammunition train Henri

heard the terrific explosion that followed, and turning ran madly back into the village. More shells fell into

the road. The men scattered like partridges, running for the fields, but the drivers of the ammunition wagons

There was cold terror in Henri's heart. He ran madly, throwing aside his cape as he went. More shells fell

ahead in the street. Once in the darkness he fell flat over the body of a horse. There was a steady groaning

from the ditch near by. But he got up and ran on, a strange figure with his flying hair and his German

He was all but stabbed by Rene when he entered the little house. "Mademoiselle?" Henri gasped, holding

"I am here," said Sara Lee's voice from the little salle a manger. "Let them carry in the wounded. I am getting

ready hot water and bandages. There is not much space, for the corner of room has been shot away,"

Some one must stay," said Sara Lee. "There must be wounded in the streets. Marie is in the cellar."

Henri pleaded passionately with her to go to the cellar,but she refused. He would have gathered her up in his

arms and carried her rhere, but Jean came in, leading a wounded man, and Henri gave up in despair.

All that night they worked, a ghastly business. More than one man died that night in the little house, while a

blond young man in a German uniform gave him last mouthful of water or took down those pittifully vague

No more shells fell, At dawn, with all done that could be done. Sara Lee fainted quietly in the hallway. Henri

carrried her in and placed her on her bed. A corner of theroom was indeed gone. The mantel was shattered

and the little stove. But on the floor lay Harvey's photograph uninjured. Henri lifted it and looked at it. Then

he placed it on the table, and very reverentiv he kissed the palm of Sara Lee's quiet hand.

Daylight found the street pitiful indeed, Henri, whose costume Rene had been casting wondering glances all

night, sent a request for men from the trenches to clear away the bodies of the horses and bury them, and

somewhat later over a single grave in the fields there was a simple ceremony of burial for the men who had

fallen. Henri had changed again by that time, but he sternly forbade Sara Lee to attend.

"On pain," he said, "of no more supplies, mademoiselle. These things must be. They are war. But you can do

Ambulances took away the wounded at dawn, and the little house became quiet once more. With planks Rene

repaired the damage to the corner, and triumphantly produced and set up another stove. He even put up a

"If there had been no one here last night," she said to the photograph, "many more would have died. How can

But Harvey remained impassive, detached, his eyes on the photographer's white muslin screen. And the angle

That morning there was a conference in the little house Colonel Lilias, who had come in before for a mute

but appreciative call on Sara Lee, and for a cup of chocolate; Captain Tournay, Jean and Henri. It was held

round the little table in the salle a manger, after Marie had brought coffee and gone out.

"They had information undoubtedly," said the colonel. "The same thing happened at Pervyse when an

ammunition train went through. They had the place, and what is more they had the time. Of course there are

"It did not leave the main road until too late for observation from the air," Henri put in shortly.

"Yet any one who saw it waiting at the crossroads might have learned its destination. The drivers talk

"But the word had to be carried across," said Captain Tournay. "That is the point. My men report flashes of

lights from the fields. We have followed them up and found no houses, no anything. In this flat country a

"I shall try to learn tonight," Henri said. "It is, of course, possible that some one from over there " He

"I think not." Colonel Lilias put a hand on Henri's shoulder affectionately. "They have not your finesse, boy.

"There is a courage under fire, with their fellows round that is one thing. And a courage of attack that is

even more simple. But the bravest man is the one who works alone the man to whom capture is death

The meeting broke up. Jean and Henri went away in the car, and though supplies came up regularly Sara Lee

did not see the battered gray car for four days. At the end of that time Henri came alone. Jean, he said briefly,

was laid up for a little while with a flesh wound in his shoulder. He would be well very soon. In the meantime

here at last was mutton. It had come from England, and he, Henri, had found it lying forgotten and lonely and

After that Henri disappeared on foot. It was midafternoon and a sunny day. Sara Lee saw him walking briskly

across the fields and watched him out of sight. She spoke some French now, and she had gathered from Rene,

who had no scruples about listening at a door, that Henri was the bravest man in the Belgian Army.

Until now Sara Lee had given small thought to Henri's occupation. She knew nothing of war, and the fact that

Henri, while wearing a uniform, was unattached, had not greatly impressed her. Had she known the

constitution of a modern army she might have wondered over his freedom, his powerful car, his passes and

maps. But his detachment had not seemed odd to her. Even his appearance during the bombardment in the

uniform of a German lieutenant had meant nothing to her. She had never seen a German uniform.

That evening, however, when he returned she ventured a question. They dined together, the two of them, for

the first time at the little house alone. Always before Jean had made the third. And it was a real meal, for Sara

Lee had sacrificed a bit of mutton from her soup, and Henri had produced from his pocket a few small and

"A gift!" he said gayly, and piled them in a precarious heap in the center of the table. On the exact top he

"Now speak gently and walk softly," he said. "It is a work of art and not to be lightly demolished."

He was alternately gay and silent during the meal, and more than once Sara Lee found his eyes on her, with

And again: "When you go back to him, shall you tell him of your good friend who has tried hard to serve

"Of course I shall," said Sara Lee. "And he will write you, I know. He will be very grateful."

But it was she who was silent after that, because somehow it would be hard to make Harvey understand. And

"Mademoiselle," said Henri later on, "would you object if I make a suggestion? You wear.a very valuable

ring. I think it is entirely safe, but who can tell? And also it is not entirely kind to remind men who are far

"I am glad you told me," she said. And Henri did not explain that the Belgian soldiers would not recognize

the ring as either a diamond or a symbol, but that to him it was close to torture.

It was when he insisted on carrying out the dishes, singing a little French song as he did so, that Sara Lee

"Mademoiselle," he said, "shall I show you something that the eye of no man has seen before, and that, when

On her interested consent he called in Marie and Rene, making a great ceremony of the matter, and sending

"Now see!" he said earnestly. "No eye before has ever seen or will again. Will you guess, mademoiselle? Or

He did not, indeed. He stood, tall and young and smiling before them, and produced from his pocket the

"Perceive!" he said, breaking it open and showing the kernel. "Has human eye ever before seen it?" He thrust

It was that evening, while Sara Lee cut bandages and Henri rolled them, that she asked him what his work

was. He looked rather surprised, and rolled for a moment without replying. Then: "I am a man of all work,"

A sort of fear had been formulating itself in Sara Lee's mind. The trenches she could understand or was

beginning to understand. But this alternately joyous and silent idler, this soldier of no regiment and no detail

"Why don't you go into the trenches?" she asked with her usual directness. "You say there are too few men.

"I do something," he said, avoiding her eyes. "It is not a great deal. It is the thing I can do best. That is all."

He went away some time after that, leaving the littie house full and busy justifying its existence. The miller's

son, who came daily to chat with Marie, was helping in the kitchen. By the warm stove, and only kept from

standing over it by Marie's sharp orders, were as many men as could get near. Each held a bowl of hot soup,

and that being a good day a piece of bread. Tall soldiers and little ones, all dirty, all weary, almost all

smiling, they peered over each other's shoulders, to catch, if might be, a glimpse of Marie's face.

When they came too close she poked an elbow into some hulking fellow and sent him back.

Over all the room hung the warm steam from the kettles, and a delicious odor, and peace.

Sara Lee had never heard of the word morale. She would have been astonished to have been told that she was

helping the morale of an army. But she gave each night in that little house of mercy something that nothing

That night Henri did not come back. She stood by her table bandaging, washing small wounds, talking her

bits of French, until one o'clock. Then, the last dressing done, she went to the kitchen. Marie was there, with

Maurice went away, with a civil good night. Sara Lee stood in the doorway after he had gone, looking out.

Farther along the line there was a bombardment going on. She knew now what a bombardment meant and her

brows contracted. Somewhere there in the trenches men were enduring that, while Henri

She said a little additional prayer that night, which was that she should have courage to say to him what she

felt that there were big things to do, and that it should not all be left to these smiling, illclad peasant

At that moment Henri, in his graygreen uniform, was cutting wire before a German trench, one of a party of

German soldiers, who could not know in the darkness that there had been a strange addition to their group.

Now and then, in perfect German, he whispered a question. Always he received a reply. And stowed it away

At daylight he was asleep by Sara Lee's kitchen fire. And at daylight Sara Lee was awakened by much firing,

and putting on a dressing gown she went out to see what was happening. Rene was in the street looking

She went back into the little ruined house, heavyhearted. She knew now what it meant, an attack. That night

there would be ambulances in the street, and word would come up that certain men were gone would never

seek warmth and shelter in her kitchen or beg like children for a second bowl of soup.

Much has been said of the work of spies said and written. Here is a woman in Paris sending forbidden

messages on a marked coin. Men are tapped on the shoulder by a civil gentleman in a sack suit, and walk

But of one sort of spy nothing has been written and but little is known. Yet by him are battles won or lost. On

the intelligence he brings attacks are prepared for and counterattacks launched. It is not always the airman,

in these days of camouflage, who brings word of ammunition trains or of new batteries.

In the early days of the war the work of the secret service at the Front was of the gravest importance. There

were fewer air machines, and observation from the air was a new science. Also trench systems were

incomplete. Between them, known to a few, were breaks of solid land, guarded from behind. To one who

knew, it was possible, though dangerous beyond words, to cross the inundated country that lay between the

Henri, for instance, on that night before had left the advanced trench at the railway line, had crawled through

the Belgian barbed wire, and had advanced, standing motionless as each star shell burst overhead, and then

moving on quickly. The inundation was his greatest difficulty. Shallow in most places, it was full of hidden

wire and crisscrossed with irrigation ditches. Once he stumbled into one, but he got out by swimming. Had he

He swore to himself as his feet touched ground again. For a star shell was hanging overhead, and his efforts

had sent wide and ever increasingly widening circles over the placid surface of the lagoon. Let them lap to

Henri's method was peculiar to himself. Where there was dry terrain he did as did the others, crouched and

crept. But here in the salt marshes, where the sea had been called to Belgium's aid, he had evolved a system

of moving, neck deep in water, stopping under the white night lights, advancing in the darkness. There was

He would crawl out at last in the darkness and lie flat, as the dead lie. And then, inch by inch, he would work

his way forward, by routes that he knew. Sometimes he went entirely through the German lines, and

reconnoitered on the roads behind. They were shallow lines then, for the inundation made the country almost

Henri knew his country well, as well as he loved it. In a farmhouse behind the German lines he sometimes

doffed his wet graygreen uniform and put on the clothing of a Belgian peasant. Trust Henri then for being a

lout, a simple fellow who spoke only Flemish but could hear in many tongues. Watch him standing at

At first Henri had wished, having learned of an attack, to be among those who repelled it. Then one day his

King had sent for him to come to that little viilage which was now his capital city.

He had been sent in alone and had found the King at the table, writing. Henri bowed and waited. They were

not unlike, these two men, only Henri was younger and lighter, and where the King's eyes were gray Henri's

were blue. Such a queer setting for a king it was a tawdry summer home, illheated and cheaply furnished.

So Henri bowed and waited, and soon the King got up and shook hands with him. As a matter of fact they

knew each other rather well, but to explain more would be to tell that family name of Henri's which must

"Sit down," said the King gravely. And he got a box of cigars from the mantelpiece and offered it. "I sent for

"I am glad you think it so, sire," said Henri rather unhappily, because he felt what was coming. "But I cannot

An ordinary mortal may not interrupt a king, but a king may interrupt anything, except perhaps a German

"I want to fight too," he said stubbornly. "We need every man, and I am rather a good shot. I do this other

because I can do it. I speak their infernal tongue. But it's dirty business at the best, sire. He remembered to

"Dirty business!" said the King thoughtfully. "I see what you mean. It is, of course. But not so dirty as the

He sat still and let Henri stamp up and down, because, as has been said, he knew the boy. And he had never

been one to insist on deference, which was why he got so much of it. But at last he got up and when Henri

"I want you to do this thing, for me. And this thing only," he said. "It is the work you do best. There are

others who can fight, but I do not know any one else who can do as you have done."

Henri promised. He would have promised to go out and drown himself in the sea, just beyond the

windswept little garden, for the tall grave man who stood before him. Then he bowed and went out, and the

King went back to his plain pine table and his work. That was the reason why Sara Lee found him asleep on

the floor by her kitchen stove that morning, and went back to her cold bed to lie awake and think. But no

The arrival of Marie roused Henri. The worst of the bombardment was over, but there was faraway

desultory firing. He listened carefully before, standing outside in the cold, he poured over his head and

shoulders a pail of cold water. He was drying himself vigorously when he heard Sara Lee's voice in the

The day began for Henri when first he saw the girl. It might be evening, but it was the beginning for him. So

"Henri," she said desperately it was the first time she had called him that " I have something to say to you,

"You are going home?" It was the worst thing he could think of. But she shook her head.

"But this is different. It is not for myself. It is because I care a great deal about about "

"About your honor. And somehow this morning, when I found you here asleep, and those poor fellows in the

Henri stared at her. So that was it! And he could never tell her. He was sworn to secrecy by every tradition

and instinct of his work. He could never tell her, and she would go on thinking him a shirker and a coward.

She would be grateful. She would be sweetness itself. But deep in her heart she would loathe him, as only

"But I have told you," he said rather wildly, "I am not idle. I do certain things not much, but of a degree of

In Sara Lee's defense many things may be urged her ignorance of modern warfare; the isolation of her lack

of knowledge of the language; but, perhaps more than anything, a certain rigidity of standard that

comprehended no halfway ground. Right was right and wrong was wrong to her in those days. Men were

brave or were cowards. Henri was worthy or unworthy. And she felt that, for all his kindness to her, he was

He could have set himself right with a word, at that. But his pride was hurt. He said nothing except, when she

He went away, however, without breakfast. Sara Lee heard his car going at its usual breakneck speed up the

street, and went to the door. She would have called him back if she could, for his eyes haunted her. But he did

For four days the gray car did not come again. Supplies appeared in another gray car, driven by a surly

Fleming. The waking hours were full, as usual. Sara Lee grew a little thin, and seemed to be always listening.

But there was no Henri, and something that was vivid and joyous seemed to have gone out of the little house.

Even Marie no longer sang as she swept or washed the kettles, and Sara Lee, making up the records to send

"I am sorry that you feel as you do," she wrote, perhaps unconsciously using Henri's last words to her. "I have

not meant to be cruel. And if you were here you would realize that whether others could have done what I am

doing or not and of course many could it is worth doing. I hear that other women are establishing houses

like this, but the British and the French will not allow women so near the lines. The men come in at night

from the trenches so tired, so hungry and so cold. Some of them are wounded too. I dress the little wounds. I

do give them something, Harvey dear if it is only a reminder that there are homes in the world, and

She told him that his picture was on her mantel, but she did not say that a corner of her room had been blown

away or that the mantel was but a plank from a destroyed house. And she sent a great deal of love, but she did

not say that she no longer wore his ring on her finger. And of course she was coming back to him if he still

More than Henri's absence was troubling Sara Lee those days. Indeed she herself laid all her anxiety to one

thing, a serious one at that. With all the marvels of Henri's buying, and Jean's, her money was not holding

out. The scope of the little house had grown with its fame. Now and then there were unexpected calls, too

Marie's mother, starving in Havre; sickness and death in the little town at the crossroads: a dozen small

emergencies, but adding to the demands on her slender income. She had, as a matter of fact, already begun to

And during the days when no gray car appeared she faced the situation, took stock, as it were, and grew

On the fifth day the gray car came again, but Jean drove it alone. He disclaimed any need for sympathy over

There was the business of checking them off, and the further business of Sara Lee's paying for them in gold.

She sat at the table, Jean across, and struggled with centimes and francs and louis d'or, an engrossed frown

Jean, sitting across, thought her rather changed. She smiled very seldom, and her eyes were perhaps more

steady. It was a young' girl he and Henri had brought out to the little house. It was a very serious and rather

anxious young woman who sat across from him and piled up the money he had brought back into little stacks.

"You see I had a little money of my own, and twenty pounds I got in London. You and and Henri have

done miracles for me. But soon I shall have used all my own money, except enough to take me back. And

She sat still, her hands before her on the table. From the kitchen came the bubbling of the eternal soup.

Suddenly a tear rolled slowly down her cheek. She had a hatred of crying in public, but Jean apparently did

"The trouble, mademoiselle, is that you are trying to feed and comfort too many."

The only clear thought in Sara Lee's mind was that Henri was not in France, and that he had gone without

telling her. She had hurt him orribly. She knew that. He might never come back to the little house of mercy.

There was, in Henri, for all his joyousness, an implacable strain. And she had attacked his honor. What

The memory of all his thoughtful kindness came back, and it was a pale and distracted Sara Lee who looked

But though they said nothing more, Jean considered the matter deeply. He understood now, for instance, a

certain strangeness in Henri's manner before his departure. They had quarreled, these two. Perhaps it was as

well, though Jean was by now a convert to Sara Lee. But he looked out, those days, on but half a world, did

Jean. So he saw only the woman hunger in Henri, and nothing deeper. And in Sara Lee a woman, and nothing

They fell to discussing ways and means. The chocolate could be cut out, but not the cigarettes. Sara Lee,

arguing vehemently for them and trying to forget other things, remembered suddenly how Uncle James had

hated cigarettes, and that Harvey himself disapproved of them. Somehow Harvey seemed, those days, to

At Jean's suggestion she added to her report of so many men fed with soup, so much tobacco, sort not

specified, so `many small wounds dressed a request that if possible her allowance be increased. She did it

nervously, but when the letter had gone she felt a great relief. She inclosed a snapshot of the little house.

Jean, as it happens, had lied about Henri. Not once, but several times. He had told Marie, for instance, that

Henri was in England, and later on he told Rene. Then, having done his errand, he drove six miles back along

the main road to Dunkirk and picked up Henri, who was sitting on the bank of a canal watching an

Jean backed into a lane and turned the car round. After that Henri got in and they went rapidly back toward

the Front. It was a different Henri, however, who left the car a mile from the crossroads a Henri in the

uniform of a French private soldier, one of those odd and mpracticable uniforms of France during the first

year, baggy dark blue trousers, stiff cap, and the longtailed coat, its skirts turned back and faced. Round his

neck he wore a knitted scarf, which covered his chin, and, true to the instinct of the French peasant in a

winter campaign, he wore innumerable undergarments, the red of a jersey showing through rents in his coat.

Gone were Henri's long clean lines, his small waist and broad shoulders, the swing of his walk. Instead, he

walked with the bentkneed swing of the French infantryman, that tireless but awkward marching step which

He carried all the impedimenta of a man going into the trenches, an extra jar of water, a flat loaf of bread

Even Jean smiled as he watched him moving along toward the crowded crossroads smiled and then sighed.

For Jean had lost everything in the war. His wife had died of a German bullet long months before, and with

her had gone a child much prayed for and soon to come. But Henri had brought back to Jean something to

Henri walked along gayly. He hailed other French soldiers. He joined a handful and stood talking to them.

The crossroads was crowded, as usual many soldiers, at rest, waiting for the word to fall in, a battery held

up by the breaking of a wheel. A temporary forge had been set up, and soldiers in leather aprons were

working over the fire. A handful of peasants watched, their dull eyes following every gesture. And one of

Henri sat down on the ground and lighted a cigarette. The ammunition train rolled in and halted, and the man

Henri watched turned his attention to the train. He had been dull and quiet at the forge, but now he became

smiling, a good fellow. He found a man he knew among the drivers and offered him a cigarette. He also

produced and presented an entire box of matches. Matches were very dear, and hardly to be bought at any

Still humming under his breath, when the peasant left the crossroads he followed him. Not closely. The

peasant cut across the fields. Henri followed the road and entered the fields at a different angle. He knew his

way quite well, for he had done the same thing each day for four days. Only twice he had been a Belgian

Four days he had done this thing, but today was different. Today there would be something worth while,

he fancied. And he made a mental note that Sara Lee must not be in the little house that night.

When he had got to a canal where the pollard willows were already sending out their tiny red buds, Henri sat

down again. The village lay before him, desolate and ruined, a travesty of homes. And on a slight rise, but so

concealed from him by the willows that only the great wings showed, stood the windmill.

It was the noon respite then, and beyond the line of popiars all as quiet. The enemy liked time for foods and

the Belgians crippled by the loss of that earlier train, were husbanding their ammunition. Far away a gap in

the poplar trees showed a German observation balloon, a tiny dot against the sky.

The man Henri watched went slowly, for he carried a bag of grain on his back. Henri no longed watched him,

He watched the wind wheel. It had been broken, and one plane was now patched with what looked like a red

cloth. There was a good wind, but clearly the miller was idle that day. The great wings were not turning.

Henri sat still and smoked. He thought of many things of Sara Lee's eyes when in the center of the London

traffic she had held the dying donkey; of her small and radiant figure at the Savoy; of the morning he had

found her at Calais, in the Gare Maritime, quietly unconscious that she had done a courageous thing. And he

thought, too, of the ring and the photograph she carried. But mostly he remembered the things she had said to

Perhaps there came to him his temptation too. It would be so easy that night, if things went well, to make a

brave showing before her, to let her see that these odd jobs he did had their value and their risks. But he put

that from him. The little house of mercy must be empty that night, for her sake. He shivered as he

remembered the room where she slept, the corner that was shot away and left open to the street. So he sat and

watched. And at one o'clock the mill wheel began turning. It was easy to count the revolutions by the red

wing. Nine times it turned, and stopped. After five minutes or so it turned again, thirty times. Henri smiled:

His work for the afternoon was done. Still with the bentkneed swing he struck back to the road, and

avoiding the crossroads, went across more fields to a lane where Jean waited with the car. Henri took a

plunge into the canal when he had removed his French uniform, and producing a towel from under a hush

rubbed himself dry. His lean boyish body gleamed, arms and legs brown from much swimming under

peaceful summer suns. On his chest he showed two scars, still pink. Shrapnel bites, he called them. But he

My passion for cleanliness," Henri said blithely, "is the result of my English school days. You would have

"You would be prettier without those scars" he observed. But in his heart he prayed that there might be no

others added to them, that nothing might mar or destroy that bright and youthful body.

But Henri was minded to play. He girded himself with the towel and struck an attitude. "The Russian ballet,

Jean!" he said, and capering madly sent Jean into deep grumbles of laughter by his burlesque.

"I must have exercise," Henri said at last when, breathless and with flying hair, he began to dress. That, too,

"Pay!" he said. "What is there to pay me with? And what is the use of reopening the matter? A man may be a

spy for love of his country. God knows there is enough lying and deceit in the business. But to be a spy or

There was a little silence. Then: "Now for mademoiselle," said Henri. "She must be out of the village

"But why should I go?" Sara Lee asked. "It is kind of you to ask me, Jean. But I am here to work, not to

Long ago Sara Lee had abandoned her idea of Jean as a paid chauffeur. She even surmised, from something

Marie had said, that he had been a person of importance in the Belgium of before the war. So she was

"Cut off from your own kind. And now and then one finds, at the hotel in Dunkirk, some English nurses who

"Jean," she said unexpectedly, "why don't you tell me the truth? You want me to leave the village tonight.

"No troops will pass through the town tonight. They will take a road beyond the fields."

"How do you know these things?" she asked, wondering. "About the troops I can understand. But the

"There are ways of finding out, mademoiselle," he replied in his noncommittal voice. "Now, will you go?"

"Then I shall not go. How can you think that I would consider my own safety and leave them here?"

Jean had ascertained before speaking that Marie was not in the house. As for Rene, he sat on the single

doorstep and whittled pegs on which to hang his rifle inside the door. And as he carved he sang words of his

Inside the little salle a manger Jean reassured Sara Lee. It was important vital that Rene and Marie should

not know far in advance of the bombardment. They were loyal, certainly, but these were his orders. In

Sara Lee's heart, which had been going along nerely as a matter of duty ll day, suddenly began to beat faster.

Her color came up, and then faded again. He had returned, and he had not come to the little house. But then

what could Henri mean to her, his coming or his going? Was she to add to her other sins against Harvey the

Not that she said all that, even to herself. There was a wave of gladness and then a surge of remorse. That is

all. But it was a very sober Sara Lee who put on her black suit with the white collar that afternoon and

ordered, by Jean's suggestion, the evening's preparations as though nothing was to happen.

She looked round her little room before she left it. It might not be there when she returned. So she placed

Harvey's photograph under her mattress for safety, and rather uncomfortably she laid beside it the small ivory

crucifix that Henri had found in a ruined house and brought to her. Harvey was not a Catholic. He did not

believe in visualizing his religion. And she had a distinct impression that he considered such things as did so

Sometime after dusk that evening the ammunition train moved out. At a point a mile or so from the village a

dispatch rider on a motor cycle stopped the rumbling lorry at the head of the procession and delivered a

message, which the guide read by the light of a sheltered match. The train moved on, but it did not turn down

to the village. It went beyond to a place of safety, and there remained for the night.

But before that time Henri, lying close in a field, had seen a skulking figure run from the road to the mill, and

soon after had seen the mill wheel turn once, describing a great arc; and on one of the wings, showing only

Five minutes later, exactly time enough for the train to have reached the village street, German shells began

In every land during this war there have been those who would sell their country for a price. Sometimes

money. Sometimes protection. And of all betrayals that of the man who sells his own country is the most

One thing he had not counted on, he who foresaw most things. The miller and his son, being what they were,

were cowards as well. Doubtless the mill had been promised protection. It was too valuable to the Germans to

be destroyed. But with the first shot both men left the house by the mill and scurried like rabbits for the open

Maurice, poor Marie's lover by now, almost trampled on Henri's prostrate body. And Henri was alone, and

his work was to take them alive. They had information he must have how the modus vivendi had been

He could not follow them through the fields. He lay still, during a iercer bombardment than the one before,

raising his head now and then to see if the little house of mercy still stood. No shells came his way, but the

sky line of the village altered quickly. The standing fragment of the church towers went early. There was

much sound of falling masonry. From somewhere behind him a Belgian battery gave tongue, but not for long.

Henri moved then. He crept nearer the mill and nearer. And at last he stood inside and took his bearings. A

lamp burned in the kitchen, showing a dirty brick floor and a littered table such a house as men keep,

untidy and unhomelike. A burnt kettle stood on the hearth, and leaning against the wall was the bag of grain

There was a boxedin staircase to the upper floor, and there, with the door slightly ajar, he stationed himself,

pistol in hand. Now and then he glanced uneasily at the clock. Sara Lee must not be back before he had taken

his prisoners to the little house and turned them over to those who waited there.

There were footsteps outside, and Henri drew the door a little closer. But he was dismayed to find it Marie.

She sat down for a moment, and then, seeing the disorder about her, set to work to clear the table. It was then

"Marie," he said quietly, "go up these stairs and remain quiet. Do not walk round. And do not come down, no

She obeyed him, stumbling somewhat. For she had seen his revolver, and it frightened her. But as she passed

"He is good Maurice," she said, gasping. "Of the father I know nothing, but Maurice "

Now, by all that goes to make a story, Sara Lee should have met Mabel at the Hotel des Arcades in Dunkirk,

and should have been able to make that efficient young woman burn with jealousy Mabel, who from the

Indeed Sara Lee, to whom the world was beginning to seem very small, had had some such faint hope. But

Mabel was not there, and it was not until long after that they met at all, and then only when the lights had

There were a few nurses there, in their white veils with the red cross over the forehead, and one or two

Englishwomen in hats that sat a trifle too high on the tops of their heads and with long lists before them

which they checked as they ate. Aviators in leather coats; a few Spahis in cloak and turban, with

fullgathered bloomers and high boots; some American amhulance drivers, rather noisy and very young; and

many officers, in every uniform of the Allied armies sat at food together and for a time forgot their

anxieties under the influence of lights, food and warmth, and red and white wine mixed with water.

When he chose, Jean could be a delightful companion; not with Henri's lift of spirits, but quietly interesting.

And that evening he was a new Jean to Sara Lee, a man of the world, talking of world affairs. He found her

apt and intelligent, and for Sara Lee much that had been clouded cleared up forever that night. Until then she

had known only the humanities of the war, or its inhumanities. There, over that little table, she learned

something of its politics and its inevitability. She had been working in the dark, with her heart only. Now she

began to grasp the real significance of it all, of Belgium's anxiety for many years, of Germany's cold and

cruel preparation, and empty protests of friendship. She learned of the flight of the government from

Brussels, the most important state papers being taken away in a hand cart, on top of which, at the last

moment, some flustered official had placed a tall silk hat! She learned of the failure of great fortifications

before the invaders' heavy guns. And she had drawn for her such a picture of Albert of Belgium as she was

Perhaps Sara Lee's real growth began that night, over that simple diuner at the Hotel des Arcades.

"I wish," she said at last, "that Uncle James could have heard all this. He was always so puzzled about it all.

When dinner was over a bit of tension had relaxed in her somewhat. She had been too close, for too long.

And when a group of Belgian omcers, learning who she was, asked to be presented and gravely thanked her,

"We must see if mademoiselle shall not have a medal," said the only one who spoke English.

"For courage," he said, bowing. "Belgium has little to give, but it can at least do honor to a brave lady."

Jean was smiling when they passed on. What a story would this slip of a girl take home with her!

But: "I don't think I want a medal, Jean," she said. "I didn't come for that. And after all it is you and Henri

Accustomed to women of a more sophisticated class, Jean had at first taken her naivete for the height of

subtlety. He was always expecting her to betray herself. But after that evening with her he changed. Just such

simplicity had been his wife's. Sometimes Sara Lee reminded him of her the upraising of her eyes or an

"You are very wonderful, you Americans," he said. It was the nearest to a compliment that he had ever come.

And after that evening he was always very gentle with her. Once he had protected her because Henri had

The ride home through the dark was very quiet. Sara Lee sat beside him watching the stars and growing

increasingly anxious as they went, not too rapidly, toward the little house. There were no lights. Air raids had

grown common in Dunkirk, and there were no street lights in the little city. Once on the highway Jean lighted

the lamps, but left them very low, and two miles from the little house he put them out altogether. They

traveled by starlight then, following as best they could the tall trees that marked the road. Now and then they

went astray at that, and once they tilted into the ditch and had hard pulling to get out.

At the top of the street Jean stopped and went on foot a little way down. He came back, with the report that

new shells had made the way impassable; and again Sara Lee shivered. If the little house was gone!

But it was there, and lighted too. Through its broken shutters came the yellow glow of the oil lamp that now

Whatever Jean's anxieties had been fell from him as he pushed open the door. Henri's voice was the first thing

So it was that Sara Lee saw, for the last time, the miller and his son, Maurice; saw them, but did not know

them, for over their heads were bags of their own sacking, with eyeholes roughly cut in them. Their hands

"I have covered your heads," Henri was saying in French, "because it is not well that our brave Belgians

A few moments later he turned from the door and heard Sara Lee sobbing in her room. He tapped, and on

receiving no reply he went in. The room was unharmed, and by the light of a candle he saw the girl, face

down on the bed. He spoke to her, but she only lay crouched deeper, her shoulders shaking.

"It is war, mademoiselle," he said, and went closer. Then suddenly all the hurt of the past days, all the

"That I should have hurt you so!" he said softly. "I, who wouki die for you, mademoiselle. I who worship

you." He buried his face in the warm hollow of her neck and held her close. He was trembling. "I love you,"

She quieted under his touch. He was very strong, and there was refuge in his arms. For a moment she lay still,

happier than she had been for weeks. It was Henri who was shaken now and the girl who was still.

But very soon came the thing that, after all, he expected. She drew herself away from him, and Henri,

"Who are they?" was the first thing she said. It rather stabbed him. He had just told her that he loved her, and

"PLease kiss me, Henri," she said very simply. "I have been cruel and stupid, and "

But he had her in his arms then, and he drew her close as though he would never let her go. He was one great

burst of joy, poor Henri. But when she gently freed herself at last it was to deliver what seemed for a time his

"You have paid me a great tribute," she said, still simply and gravely. "I wanted you to kiss me, because of

"He is he is my kind," said Sara Lee rather pitifully. "I am not what you think me. You see me here, doing

what you think is good work, and you are grateful. And you don't see any other women. So I"

"And you think I love you because I see no one else?" he demanded, still rather stunned.

"This man at home " he said bitterly; "this man who loves you so well that he let you cross the sea and come

All at once Sara Lee saw the little parlor at home, and Harvey, gentle, rather stolid and dependable. Oh, very

dependable. She saw him as he had looked the night he had said he loved her, rather wistful and very, very

tender. She could not hurt him so. She had said she was going back to him, and she must go.

Very quietly, considering the hell that was raging in him, Henri bent over and kissed her hand. Then he

turned it over, and for an instant he held his cheek against its warmth. He went out at once, and Sara Lee

Time passed quickly, as always it does when there is work to do. Round the ruined houses the gray grass

turned green again, and in travesties of gardens early spring flowers began to show a touch of color.

The first of them greeted Sara Lee one morning as she stood on her doorstep in the early sun. She gathered

them and placed them, one on each grave, in the cemetery near the poplar trees, where small wooden crosses,

Marie, a silent subdued Marie, worked steadily in the little house. She did not weep, but now and then Sara

Lee found her stirring something on the stove and looking toward the quiet mill in the fields. And once Sara

Lee, surprising that look on her face, put her arms about the girl and held her for a moment. But she did not

With the opening up of the spring came increased movement and activity among the troops. The beach and

the sand dunes round La Panne were filled with drilling men, Belgium's new army. Veterans of the winter, at

rest behind the lines, sat in the sun and pared potatoes for the midday meal. Convalescents from the hospital

appeared in motley garments from the Ambulance Ocean and walked along the water front, where the sea, no

longer gray and sullen, rolled up in thin white lines of foam to their very feet. Winter straw came out of

wooden sabots. Winterbitten hands turned soft. Canal boats blossomed out with great washings. And the

sentry at the gun emplacement in the sand up the beach gave over gathering sticks for his fire, and lay, when

So spring came to that small fragment of Belgium which had been saved spring and hope. Soon now the great

and powerful Allies would drive out the Huns, and all would be as it had been. Splendid rumors were about.

The Germans were already yielding at La Bassee. There was to be a great drive along the entire Front, and

A sort of informal council took place occasionally in the little house. Maps replaced the dressings on the table

in the salle a manger, and junior officers, armed with Sara Lee's box of pins, thrust back the enemy at various

points and proved conclusively that his position was untenable. They celebrated these paper victories with

Sara Lee's tea, and went away the better for an hour or so of hope and tea and a girl's soft voice and quiet

Now and then there was one, of course, who lagged behind his fellows, with a yearning tenderness in his face

that a glance from the girl would have quickly turned to love. But Sara Lee had no coquetry. When, as

occasionally happened, there was a bit too much fervor when her hand was kissed, she laid it where it

belonged to loneliness and the spring and became extremely maternal and very, very kind. Which both

The winter floods were receding. Along the Yser Canal mudcaked flats began to appear, with here and there

rusty tangles of barbed wire. And with the lessening of the flood came new activities to the little house. The

Day after day messages were left with Sara Lee by men in uniform sometimes letters, sometimes a word.

And these she faithfully cared for until such time as Jean came for them. Now and then it was Henri who

came, but when he stayed in the village he made his headquarters at the house of the mill. There, with sacking

over the windows, he wrote his reports by lamplight, reports which Jean carried back to the villa in the

However, though he no longer came and went as before, Henri made frequent calls at the house of mercy. But

now he came in the evenings, when the place was full of men. Sara Lee was doing more dressings than

before. The semiarmistice of winter was over, and there were nights when a row of wounded men lay on the

floor in the little salle a manger and waited, in a sort of dreadful quiet, to be taken away.

Rumors came of hard fighting farther along the line, and sometimes, on nights when the clouds hung low, the

flashes of the guns at Ypres looked like incessant lightning. From the sand dunes at Nieuport and Dixmude

there was firing also, and the air seemed sometimes to be full of scouting planes.

The Canadians were moving toward the Front at Neuve Chapelle at that time. And one day a lorry, piled high

There were four boys in khaki on the truck, and not a word of French among them. Sara Lee, who rolled her

"Good gracious!" she said, and gave an alarmed glance at the sky. But it was the noon hour, when every good

The boys cheered perceptibly. Here was at last some one who spoke a Christian tongue.

"Where do you want to go?" she asked. "You are very close to the Belgian Front here. It is not at all safe."

"Dear me!" said Sara Lee. "You are a long way off. And a long way from home too."

They smiled. They looked, with their cleanshaven faces, absurdly young after the bearded Belgian soldiers.

"I am an American, too," said Sara Lee with just a touch of homesickness in her voice. She had been feeling

lonely lately. "If you have time to come in I could give you luncheon. Rene can tell us if any German air

Would they come in? Indeed, yes! They crawled down off the lorry, and took off their caps, and ate every

particle of food in the house. And, though they were mutely curious at first, soon they were asking questions.

"Not so dangerous as it looks," said Sara Lee, smiling. "The Germans seldom bother the town now. It is not

Later on they went over the house. They climbed the broken staircase nd stared toward the break in the poplar

The others were gazing intently toward the Front. Never before had they been so close. Never had they seen a

ruined town. War, until now, had been a thing of Valcartier, of a long voyage, of much drill in the mud at

"Damn them!" said one of the boys suddenly. "Fellows, we'll get back at them soon."

So they went away, a trifle silent and very grateful. But before they left they had a glimpse of Sara Lee's

"Some girl!" they repeated as they drove up the street. It was the tribute of inarticulate youth.

Sara Lee went back to her bandages and her thoughts. She had not a great deal of time to think, what with the

officers stopping in to fight their paperandpin battles, and with letters to write and dressings to make and

supplies to order. She began to have many visitors officers from the French lines, correspondents on tours

of the Front, and once even an English cabinet member, who took six precious lumps of sugar in his tea nd

Once a British aviator brought his machine down in the field by the mill, and walked over with the stiff stride

of a man who has been for hours in the air. She gave him tea and bread and butter, and she learned then of the

When she was alone she thought about Henri. Generally her thoughts were tender; always they were grateful.

But she was greatly puzzled. He had said that he loved her. Then, if he loved her, why should he not be gentle

and kind to her? Men did not hurt the women they loved. And because she was hurt, she was rather less than

just. He had not asked her to marry him. He had said that he loved her, but that was different. And the

The truth was that she was tired. The strain was telling on her. And at a time when she needed every moral

support Henri had drawn off behind a wall of misery, and all her efforts at a renewal of their old friendship

There were times, too, when she grew a little frightened. She was so alone. What if Henri went away

altogether? What if he took away the little car, and his protection, and the supplies that came so regularly? It

For the first time she realized her complete dependence on his good will. And now and then she felt that it

would be good to see Harvey again, and be safe from all worry, and not have to depend on a man who loved

her as Henri did. For that she never doubted. Inexperienced as she was in such matters, she knew that the boy

loved her. Just how wildly she did not know until later, too late to undo what the madness had done.

Then one day a strange thing happened. It had been raining, and when in the late afternoon the sun came out

it gleamed in the puddles that filled the shell holes in the road and set to a red blaze the windows of the house

First, soaring overhead, came a half dozen friendly planes. Next, the eyes of the enemy having thus been

blinded, so to speak, there came a regiment of fresh troops, swinging down the street for all the world as

though the German Army was safely drinking beer in Munich. They passed Rene, standing openmouthed in

the doorway, and one wag of a Belgian boy, out of sheer joy of spring, did the goose step as he passed the

little sentry and, head screwed round in the German salute, crossed his eyes over his impudent nose.

Came, then, the planes. Came the regiment, which turned off into a field and there spread itself, like a snake

uncoiling, into a double line. Came a machine, gray and battered, containing officers. Came a general with

The general found Sara Lee in the salle manger cutting cotton into threeinch squares, and he stood in the

Sara Lee replied to that, and then gave a quick thought to her larder. Because generals usually meant tea. But

this time at last Sara Lee was to receive something, not to give. She turned very white when she was told, and

said she had not deserved it; she was indeed on the verge of declining, not knowing that there are certain

things one does not decline. But Marie brought her hat and jacket a smiling, tremulous Marie and Sara

The general was very tall. In her short skirt and with flying hair she looked like a child beside him as they

walked across the fields. Suddenly Sara Lee was terribly afraid she was going to cry.

The troops stood rigidly at attention. And a cold wind flapped Sara Lee's skirts, and the guns hammered at

Ypres, and the general blew on his fingers. And soon a low open car came down the street and the King got

out. Sara Lee watched him coming his tall, slightly stooped figure, his fair hair, his plain blue uniform. Sara

Lee had never seen a king before, and she had always thought of them as sitting up on a sort of platform

The amazing interlude, indeed! With Sara Lee being decorated by the King, and troops drawn up to do her

honor, and over all the rumbling of the great guns. A palpitating and dazed Sara Lee, when the decoration

was fastened to her black jacket, a Sara Lee whose hat blew off at exactly the worst moment and rolled, end

But, oddly, she did not mind about the hat. She had only one conscious thought just then. She hoped that,

wherever Uncle James might be in that world of the gone before, he might know what was happening to her

or even see it He would have liked it. He had believed in the Belgians and in the King. And now The

King did not go at once. He went back to the little house and went through it. And he and one of his generals

climbed to the upper floor, and the King stood looking out silently toward the land he loved and which for a

He came down after a time, stooping his tall figure in the low doorway, and said he would like some tea. So

Marie put the kettle on, and Sara Lee and the King talked. It was all rather dazing. Every now and then she

forgot certain instructions whispered her by the general, and after a time the King said: "Why do you do that,

"But we are being informal," said the King, smiling. "And it is a very little room."

Sara Lee, who had been taught in the schoolroom that kings are usurpers of the divine rights of the people

Sara Lee lost just a bit of her staunch democracy that day. She saw the King of the Belgians for what he

really was, a ruler, but a symbol as well. He represented his country, as the Flag she loved represented hers.

It was a very humble and flushed Sara Lee who watched the gray car go lying up the street later on. She went

in and told the whole story to Harvey's picture, but it was difficult to feel that he was hearing. His eyes were

turned away and his face was set and stern. And at last she gave it up. This thing which meant so much to her

"Decorate you! I should think they might. Medals are cheap. Everybody over there is getting medals. You

feed their men and risk your life and your reputation, and they give you a thing to pin on. It's cheap at the

And later on those were Harvey's very words. But to be fair to him they were but the sloughing of a wound

That evening Henri came again. He was, for the first time, his gay self again at least on the surface. It was

as though, knowing what he was going into, he would leave with Sara Lee no feeling, if he never returned,

that she had inflicted a lasting hurt. He was everywhere in the little house, elbowing his way among the men

with his cheery nonsense, bantering the weary ones until they smiled, carrying hot water for Sara Lee and

"If you would do it in this fashion, mademoiselle," he would say, "with one turn of the bandage over the

"You say that to me, mademoiselle? I who have taught you all you know of bandaging?"

He had a fund of nonsense that he drew on, too, when a dressing was painful. It would run like this, to an

"Pierre, what can you put in your left hand that you cannot place in the right? Stop grunting like a pig, and

The little crowd in the dressing room would draw in close about the table to listen.

He had an inexhaustible stock of such riddles, almost never guessed. He would tell the answer and then laugh

THERE was a question to settle, and it was for Henri to do it. Two questions indeed. One was a matter of

engineering, and before the bottom fell out of his world Henri had studied engineering. The second was more

For the first, this thing had happened. Of all the trenches to be held, the Belgians had undeniably the worst.

Properly speaking they were not trenches at all, but shallow gutters dug a foot or two into the saturated

ground and then built manhigh with bags of earth or sand. Here and there they were not dug at all, but were

purely shelters, against a railway embankment, of planks or sandbags, and reinforced by rails from the

For this corner of Belgium had been saved by turning it into a shallow lake. By opening the gates in the dikes

the Allies had let in the sea and placed a flood in front of the advancing enemy. The battle front was a reeking

pond. The opposing armies lived like duck hunters in a swamp. To dig a foot was to encounter water.

Machine guns here and there sat but six inches above the yellow flood. Men lay in pools to fire them. To

reach outposts were narrow paths built first of bags of earth a life, sometimes for every bag. And, when this

filling was sufficient, on top a path of fascines, bound together in bundles, made a footway.

For this reason the Belgians approached their trenches not through deep cuts which gave them shelter but

with no other cover than the darkness of night. During the day, they lay in their shallow dugouts, cut off from

any connection with the world behind them. Food, cooked miles away, came up at night, cold and

unappetizing. For water, having exhausted their canteens, there was nothing but the brackish tide before

them, ill smelling and reeking of fever. Water carts trundled forward at night, but often they were far too few.

The Belgians, having faced their future through long years of anxiety, had been trained to fight. In a way they

had been trained to fight a losing war, for they could not hope to defeat their greedy neighbor on the east. But

now they found themselves fighting almost not at all, condemned to inactivity, to being almost passively

slaughtered by enemy artillery, and to living under such conditions as would have sapped the courage of a

To add to the difficulties, not only did the sea encroach, turning a fertile land into a salt marsh, but the winter

rains, unusually heavy that tragic first winter, and lacking their usual egress to the sea, spread the flood.

There were many places well back of the lines where fields were flooded, and where roads, sadly needed, lost

Henri then, knowing all this none better had his first question to settle, which was this: As spring

advanced the flood had commenced to recede. Time came when, in those trenches now huddled shallow

behind the railway track, one could live in a certain comfort. In the deeper ones the bottom of the trench

On a day previous, however, the water had commenced to come back. There had been no rain, but little by

little in a certain place yellow, illsmelling little streams began to flow sluggishly into the trenches. Seeped,

rather than flowed. At first the Belgian officers laid it to that bad luck that bad so persistently pursued them.

Then they held a conference in the small brick house with its maps and its pine tables and its picture of an

Sitting under the hanging lamp, with an orderly making coffee at a stove in the corner, they talked it over.

Henri was there, silent before his elders, but intently listening. And at last they turned to him.

"I can go and find out," he said quietly. "It is possible, though I do not see how." He smiled. "They are, I

But the cry of "Calais in a month!" was in the air, and undoubtedly there had been renewed activity along the

German Front near the sea. The second question to be answered was dependent on the first.

Had the Germans, as Henri said, merely shifted the water, by some clever engineering, to the Belgian

trenches, or was there some bigger thing on hand? What, for instance, if they were about to attempt to drain

the inundation, smash the Belgian line, and march by the Dunkirk road to Calais?

So, that night while Henri jested about Pierre's right elbow and watched Sara Lee for a smile, he had difficult

Sometime near midnight he slipped away. Jean was waiting in the street, and wrung the boy's hand.

"I have two pistols, my friend," said Henri, and turned the corner of the building, past the boards Rene had

built in, toward the house of the mill. But once out of Jean's sight he stopped a moment, his hand resting

For three days Jean stayed in the village. He slept at the mill, but he came for his meals to the little house.

Once he went to Dunkirk and brought out provisions and the mail, including Sara Lee's monthly allowance.

"You do not eat at all, Jean," Sara Lee said to him more than once. And twice she insisted that he was

feverish, and placed a hand that was somewhat marred with much peeling of vegetables, on his forehead.

"I am entirely well, mademoiselle," he would say, and draw back. He had anxieties enough just now without

Long before that Sara Lee had learned not to question Jean about Henri's absences. Even his knowledge, now,

that she knew something of Henri's work, did not remove the barrier. So Sara Lee waited, as did Jean, but

more helplessly. She knew something was wrong, but she had not Jean's privilege of going at night to the

trenches and there waiting, staring over the gray water with its ugly floating shadows, for Henri to emerge

Something rather forced and mechanical there was those days in her work. Her smile was rather set. She did

not sleep well. And one night she violated Henri's orders and walked across the softened fields to beyond the

There was nothing to see except an intermittent flash from the clouds that hung low over the sea at Nieuport,

where British gunboats were bombarding the coast; or the steady streaks from the Ypres salient, where night

>From the Belgian trenches, fifteen hundred feet or so away, there was no sound. A German electric signal

blazed its message in code, and went out quickly. Now and then a rifle shot, thin and sharp, rang out from

where, under the floating starlights, keen eyes on each side watched for movements on the other.

Sara Lee sat down under a tree and watched for a while. Then she found herself crying softly. It was all so

sad, and useless, and cruel. And somewhere there ahead was Henri, Henri with his blue eyes, his smile, the

Sara Lee had never deceived herself about Henri. She loved him. But she was quite certain she was not in

love with him, which is entirely different. She knew that this last was impossible, because she was engaged to

Harvey. What was probably the truth was that she loved them both in entirely different ways. Men have

always insisted on such possibilities, and have even asserted their right, now and then, to love two women at

And, in such cases, there is no grand passion. There are tenderness, and the joy of companionship, and

sometimes a touching dependence. But it is not a love that burns with a white fire.

Perhaps Sara Lee was one of those women who are always loved more than they love. There are such

women, not selfish, not seeking love, but softly feminine, kind, appealing and genuine. Men need, after all,

but an altar on which to lay tribute. And the high, remote white altar that was Sara Lee had already received

She was not troubling her head that night, however, about being an altar, of a sort. She cried a little at first,

because she was terrified for Henri and because Jean's face was growing pinched and gray. Then she cried

very hard, prone on the ground and face down, because Henri was young, and all of life should have been

Henri was undeniably missing. Even the King knew it now, and set down in his heart, among the other

crosses there, Henri's full name, which we may not know, and took to pacing his little study and looking out

That night Marie, having ladled to the bottom of her kettle, found Sara Lee missing, and was told by Rene of

the direction she had taken. Marie, muttering to herself, set out to find her, and almost stumbled over her in

She sat down on the ground without a word and placed a clumsy hand on the girl's shoulder. It was not until

They had by now established a system of communication. Sara Lee spoke her orders in halting French, but

general conversation was beyond her. And much hearing of English had taught the Belgian girl enough to

Sara Lee shuddered. For spies were not made prisoners. They had no rights as prisoners of war. Their own

governments did not protect them. To Henri capture was death. But she could not say this to Marie.

"Even if it were the other," she said, "it is not so bad to die for one's country. The thing that is terrible, that

leaves behind it only bitterness and grief and no hope, mademoiselle, even with many prayers, is that one has

She coaxed Sara Lee back at last. They went through the fields, for fresh troops were being thrown into the

Belgian trenches and the street was full of men. Great dray horses were dragging forward batteries, the heavy

guns sliding and slipping In the absence of such information as only Henri had been wont to bring it was best

The next day Jean did not come over for breakfast, and Rene handed Sara Lee a note.

"I am going to England," Jean had written that dawn in the house of the mill. "And from there to Holland. I

can get past the barrier and shall work down toward the Front. I must learn what has happened,

mademoiselle. As you know, if he was captured, there is no hope. But there is an excellent chance that he is

There followed what instructions he had given as to her supplies, which would come as before. Beautifully

written in Jean's small fine hand, it spelled for Sara Lee the last hope. She read Jean's desperation through its

forced cheerfulness. And she faced for the first time a long period of loneliness in the crowded little house.

She tried very hard to fill the gap that Henri had left tried to joke with the men in her queer bits of French;

was more smiling than ever, or fear she might be less. But now and then in cautious whispers she heard

A week. Two weeks. Twice the village was bombarded severely, but the little house escaped by a miracle.

Marie considered it the same miracle that left holy pictures unhurt on the walls of destroyed houses, and

Great generals, often as tall as they were great, stopped at the little house to implore Sara Lee to leave. But

"Not unless you send me away," she always said; "and that would break my heart."

"But to move, mademoiselle, only to the next village!" they would remonstrate, and as a final argument: "

"I must remain here," she said. And some of them thought they understood. When an unusually obdurate

"You see!" she would say, holding her candle high. "It is a nice cellar, warm and dry. It is " proudly one of

The officer would go away then, and send her cigarettes for her men or, as in more than one case, a squad

with bags of earth and other things to protect the little house as much as possible. After a time the little house

began to represent the ideas in protection and camouflage, then in its early stages, of many different minds.

Rene shot a man there one night, a skulking figure working its way in the shadows up the street. It was just

before dawn, and Rene, who was sleepless those days, like the others, called to him. The man started to run,

He was a German in Belgian peasant's clothing. But he wore the great shoes of the German soldier, and he

Sara Lee did not see him. But when she heard the shot she went out, and Rene told her breathlessly.

>From that time on her terrors took the definite form of Henri lying dead in a ruined street, and being buried,

as this man was buried, without ceremony and without a prayer, in some sodden spring field.

As the spring advanced Harvey grew increasA ingly bitter; grew morbid and increasingly selfconscious also.

He began to think that people were smiling behind his back, and when they asked about Sara Lee he met with

almost insulting brevity what he felt was halfcontemptuous kindness. He went nowhere, and worked all day

and until late in the night He did well in his business, however, and late in March he received a substantial

raise in salary. He took it without enthusiasm, and told Belle that night at dinner with apathy.

After the evening meal it was now his custom to go to his room and there, shut in, to read. He read no books

on the war, and even the quarter column entitled Salient Points of the Day's War News hardly received a

In the office when the talk turned to the war, as it did almost hourly, he would go out or scowl over his

"He's acting like a rotten cub," was likely to be the next sentence. But sometimes it was: "Well, what'd you

expect? Everything ready to get married, and the girl beating it for France without notice! I'd be sore myself."

On the day of the raise in salary his sister got the children to bed and straightened up the litter of small

garments that seemed always to bestrew the house, even to the lower floor. Then she went into Harvey's

room. Coat and collar off, he was lying on the bed, but not reading. His book lay beside him, and with his

She did not sit down beside him on the bed. They were an undemonstrative family, and such endearments as

Belle used were lavished on her children. But her eyes were kind, and a little nervous.

"I don't feel like talking much. I'm tired, I guess. But go on. What is it? Bills?"

She came to him in her constant financial anxieties, and always he was ready to help her out. But his tone

She sat on the straight chair beside the bed, the chair on which, in neat order, Harvey placed his clothing at

"Why? Go out and talk to a lot of driveling fools who don't care for me any more than I do for them?"

"Sorry." His tone softened. "I don't care much about going round, Belle. That's all. I guess you know why."

"Well, suppose they do? I can't help that, can I? When a fellow has been jilted "

He lay down again, his arms under his head; and Belie knew that his eyes were on Sara Lee's picture on his

"Harvey," Belle said hesitatingly, "I've brought Sara Lee's report from the Ladies' Aid. May I read it to you?"

He read it carefully, his hands rather unsteady. So many men given soup, so many given chocolate. So many

dressings done. And at the bottom Sara Lee's request for more money an apologetic, rather breathless

"I am sure that the society will feel, from the above report, that the work is worth while, and worth

continuing. I am only sorry that I cannot send photographs of the men who come for aid, but as they come at

night it is impossible. I enclose, however, a small picture of the house, which is now known as the little house

"At night!" said Harvey. "So she's there alone with a lot of ignorant foreigners at night. Why the devil don't

He got up then, and carried the tiny photograph over close to the gas jet. There he stood for a long time,

gazing at it. There was Rene with his rifle and his smile. There was Marie in her white apron. And in the

Harvey groaned and Belle came over and putting her hand on his shoulder looked at the photograph with him.

"Do you know what I think, Harvey?" she said. "I think Sara Lee is right and you are wrong."

"That's not the point!" he snapped out. "I don't begrudge the poor devils their soup. What I feel is this: If she'd

"Look at it!" he said. "She insists that she's safe. But that fellow's got a gun. What for, if she's so safe? And

look at that house! There's a corner shot away; and it's got no upper floor. Safe!"

"Not just yet," he said ominously. "I want to look at it. I haven't got it all yet. And I'll return it myself with a

"Well," he retorted, "why shouldn't I tell that lot of old scandalmongers what I think of them? They'll sit here

safe at home and beg money God, one of them was in the office today! and send a young girl over to

She turned away, but he came after her, and suddenly putting his arms round her he kissed her.

"Don't worry about me," he said. "I'm done with wearing my heart on my sleeve." She looks happy, so I

He sat up very late, alternately reading the report and looking at the picture. It was unfortunate that Sara Lee

had smiled into the camera. Coupled with her blowing hair it had given her a lightheartedness, a sort of

He made some mad plans after he had turned out the lights to flirt wildly with the unattached girls he knew;

to go to France and confront Sara Lee and then bring her home. Or He had found a way. He lay there and

thought it over, and it bore the test of the broken sleep that followed. In the morning, dressing, he wondered

he had not thought of it before. He was more cheerful at breakfast than he had been for weeks.

In the little house of mercy two weeks went by, and then a third. Soldiers marching out to the trenches

sometimes wore flowers tucked gayly in their caps. More and more Allied aeiroplanes were in the air.

Sometimes, standing in the streets, Sara Lee saw one far overhead, while balloonshaped clouds of bursting

Once or twice in the early morning a German plane, flying so low that one could easily see the black cross on

each wing, reconnoitered the village for wagon trains or troops. Always they found it empty.

Hope had almost fled now. In the afternoons Marie went to the ruined church, and there knelt before the heap

of marble and masonry that had once been the altar, and prayed. And Sara Lee, who bad been brought up a

Protestant and had never before entered a Catholic church, took to going there too. In some strange fashion

the peace of former days seemed to cling to the little structure, roofless as it was. On quiet days it silence was

deeper than elsewhere. On days of much firing the sound from within its broken walls seemed deadened, far

Marie burned a candle as she prayed, for that soul in purgatory which she had once loved, and now pitied.

Sara Lee burned no candle, but she knelt, sometimes beside Marie, sometimes alone, and prayed for many

things: that Henri should be living, somewhere; that the war might end; that that day there would be little

wounding; that some day the Belgians might go home again; and that back in America Harvey might grow to

understand and forgive her. And now and then she looked into the very depths of her soul, and on those days

she prayed that her homeland might, before it was too late, see this thing as she was seeing it. The wanton

Sara Lee's vague thinking began to crystallize. This war was not a judgment sent from on high to a sinful

world. It was the wicked imposition of one nation on other nations. It was national. It was almost racial. But

most of all it was a war of hate on the German side. She had never believed in hate. There were ugly passions

in the world jealousy, envy, suspicion; but not hate. The word was not in her rather limited vocabulary.

There was no hate on the part of the men she knew. The officers who stopped in on their way to and from the

trenches were gentlemen and soldiers. They were determined and grave; they resented, they even loathed. But

they did not hate. The little Belgian soldiers were bewildered, puzzled, desperately resentful. But of hate, as

Yet from the other side were coming methods of war so wantonly cruel, so useless save as inflicting needless

agony, as only hate could devise. No strategic value justified them. They were spontaneous outgrowths of

venom, nursed during the winter deadlock and now grown to full size and destructive power.

The rumor of a gas that seared and killed came to the little house as early as February. In March there came

the first victims, poor writhing creatures, deprived of the boon of air, their seared lungs collapsed and

agonized, their faces drawn into masks of suffering. Some of them died in the little house, and even after

To Sara Lee, burying her own anxiety under the cloak of service, there came new and terrible thoughts. This

was not war. The Germans had sent their clouds of poisoned gas across the inundation, but had made no

attempt to follow. This was killing, for the lust of killing; suffering, for the joy of inflicting pain.

And a day or so later she heard of The Hague Convention. She had not known of it before. Now she learned

of that gentlemen's agreement among nations, and that it said: "The use of poison or of poisoned weapons is

forbidden." She pondered that carefully, trying to think dispassionately. Now and then she received a copy of

a home newspaper, and she saw that the use of poison gases was being denied by Germans in America and

So, on a cold spring day, she sat down at the table in the salle manger and wrote a letter to the President,

beginning " Dear Sir"; and telling what she knew of poison gas. She also, on second thought, wrote one to

Andrew Carnegie, who had built a library in her city. She felt that the expense to him of sending some one

She never heard from either of her letters, but she felt better for having written them. And a day or two later

she received from Mrs. Travers, in England, a small supply of the first gas masks of the war. Simple and

primitive they were, those first masks; useless, too, as it turned out a square of folded gauze, soaked in

some solution and then dried, with tapes to tie it over the mouth and nose. To adjust them the soldiers had but

to stoop and wet them in the everpresent water in the trench, and then to tie them on.

Sara Lee gave them out that night, and there was much mirth in the little house, such mirth as there had not

been since Henri went away. The Belgians called it a bal masque, and putting them on bowed before one

another and requested dances, and even flirted coyly with each other over their bits of white gauze. And in

the very middle of the gayety some one propounded one of Henri's idiotic riddles; and Sara Lee went across

to her little room and closed the door and stood there with her eyes shut, for fear she would scream.

Then, one day, coming out of the little church, she saw the low broken gray car turn in at the top of the street

She ran, stumbling because of tears, up the street. It was Henri! There was no mistake. There he sat beside

"Mademoiselle!" he said, and came very close to crying himself when he saw her face. He was greatly

excited. His sunken eyes devoured her as she ran toward him. Almost he held out his arms. But he could not

It is rather sad to record how many times Sara Lee wept during her amazing interlude. For here is another

time. She wept for joy and wretchedness. She stood on the running board and cried and smiled. And Jean

"This idiot, mademoiselle," he said gruffly, "this maniac he would not remain in Calais, with proper care.

He must come on here. And rapidly. Could he have taken the wheel from me we should have been here an

The car jolted to the little house, and Jean helped Henri out. Such a strange Henri, smiling and joyous, and

walking at a crawl, even with Jean's support. He protested violently against being put to bed, and when he

"Never!" he said stubbornly, halting in the doorway. "This is mademoiselle's boudoir. Her drawingroom as

So Sara Lee's room had a different occupant for a time, a thin and fineworn young Belgian, who yielded to

Sara Lee when Jean gave up in despair, and who proceeded, most unmanfully, to faint as soon as he was

If Sara Lee hoped to nurse Henri she was doomed to disappointment. Jean it was who took over the care of

the boy, a Jean who now ate prodigiously, and whistled occasionally, and slept at night robed in his blanket

on the floor beside Henri's bed, lest that rebellious invalid get up and try to move about.

On the first night, with the door closed, against Henri's entreaties, while the little house received its evening

complement of men, and with Henri lying back on his pillows, fresh dressed as to the wounds in his arm and

chest, fed with Sara Lee's daintiest, and resting, Jean found the boy's eyes resting on the mantel.

"If you wish me to be happy," he said, "take away that American photograph. But first, please to bring it

Jean brought it, holding it gingerly between his thumb and forefinger. And Henri lay back and studied it.

"Look at it, Jean," Henri said in his halfbantering tone, with despair beneath it; "and then look at me. Or no

remembering me as I was when I was a man. He is better, eh? It is a good face. But there is a jaw, a Do

you think he will be kind to her as she requires? She requires much kindness. Some women "

"A half face!" Jean said scornfully. "The pretty view! As for kindness " He put the photograph face down on

the table. "I knew once a man in Belgium who married an American. At Antwerp. They were most unhappy."

"You are lying," he said with boyish pleasure in his own astuteness. "You knew no such couple. You are

But quite a little later, when Jean thought he was asleep, he said: "I shall never be resigned."

So at last spring had come, and Henri and the great spring drive. The Germans had not drained the

inundation, nor had they broken through to Calais. And it is not to be known here how much this utter failure

One day in his bed Henri received a visit from the King, and was left lying with a decoration on his breast

and a beatific, if somewhat sheepish, expression on his face. And one night the village was bombarded, and

on Henri's refusing to be moved to the cellar Sara Lee took up a determined stand in his doorway, until at last

Bit by bit Sara Lee got the story, its bare detail from Henri, its courage and sheer recklessness from Jean. It

would, for instance, run like this, with Henri in a chair perhaps, and cutting dressings since that might be

done with one hand and Sara Lee, sleeves rolled up and a great bowl of vegetables before her:

"There was a break," he would explain. "I have told you between their trenches. I had used it before to get

"Like a snake," he would say, smiling. "Very flat and wriggling. I have eaten of the dirt, mademoiselle."

"Go on," she would prompt him. "But they had put barbed wire there. Is that it? So you could not get

"With tin cans on it, and stones in the cans. I thought I had removed them all, but there was one left. So they

More cutting and a muttered French expletive. Henri was not a particularly patient cripple. And apparently

"For goodness' sake," Sara Lee would exclaim despairingly; "so they heard you! That isn't all, is it?"

"Then I pretended to be one of them, mademoiselle. I speak German as French. I pretended not to be hurt, but

to be on a reconnoissance. And I got into the trench and we had a talk in the darkness. It was most interesting.

By bits, not that day, but after many days, she got the story. In the next trench he slipped a sling over the

"I had some trouble," he confessed one day. "Now and then one would offer to go back with me. And I did

But sometime later there was trouble. She was four days getting to that part of it. He had got behind the lines

by that time, and he knew that in some way suspicion had been roused. He was weak by that time, and could

not go far. He had lain hidden, for a day and part of a night, without water, in a destroyed barn, and then had

He got into the Belgian costume as before, but he could not wear a sling for his wounded arm. He got the

peasant to thrust his helpless right hand into his pocket, and for two days he made a close inspection of what

was going on. But fever had developed, and on the third night, half delirious, when he was spoken to by an

The officer shot him instantly in the chest. He fell and lay still and the officer bent over him. In that moment

Henri stabbed him with a knife in his left hand. Men were coming from every direction, but he got away he

did not clearly remember how. And at dawn he fell into the Belgian farmhouse, apparently dying.

Jean's story, on the other hand, was given early and with no hesitation. He had crossed the border at Holland

in civilian clothes, by the simple expedient of bribing a sentry. He had got, with little difficulty, to the

farmhouse, and found Henri, now recovering but very weak; he was lying hidden in a garret, and he was

suffering from hunger and lack of medical attention. In a wagon full of market stuff, Henri hidden in the bed

of it, they had got to the border again. And there Jean had, it seemed, stabbed the sentry he had bribed before

Not an unusual story, that of Henri and Jean. The journey across Belgium in the springless farm wagon was

the worst. They had had to take roundabout lanes, avoiding the main highways. Fortunately, always at night

there were friendly houses, kind hands to lift Henri into warm firelighted interiors. Many messages they had

brought back, some of cheer, but too often of tragedy, from the small farmsteads of Belgium.

Then finally had been Holland, and the chartering of a boat and at last "Here we are, and here we are, and

here we are again," sang Henri, chopping at his cotton and making a great show of cheerfulness before Sara

But with Jean sometimes he showed the black depression beneath. He would never be a man again. He was

done for. He gained strength so slowly that he believed he was not gaining at all. He was not happy, and the

After the time he had asked Jean to take away Harvey's photograph he did not recur to the subject, but he did

not need to. Jean knew, perhaps even better than Henri himself, that the boy was recklessly, hopelessly, not

Also Henri was fretting about his work. Sometimes at night, following Henri's instructions, Jean wandered

quietly along roads and paths that paralleled the Front. At such times his eyes were turned, not toward the

trenches, but toward that flat country which lay behind, still dotted at that time with groves of trees, with

canals overhung with pollard willows, and with here and there a farmhouse that at night took on in the

Singularly white and peaceful were those small steadings of Belgium in the night hours until cruel dawn

showed them for what they were skeletons of dead homes, clothed only at night with wraithlike roofs and

Jean had not Henri's eyes nor his recklessness nor his speed, for that matter. Now and then he saw the small

appearing and disappearing lights on some smaIl rise. He would reach the spot, with such shelter as possible,

HARVEY proceeded to put his plan into effect at once, with the simple method of an essentially simple

On the afternoon following his talk with Belle he came home at three o'clock. Belle heard him moving about

in, his room, and when she entered it, after he had gone, she found that he had shaved and put on his best suit.

She smiled a little. It was like Harvey to be literal. He had said he was going to go round and have a good

time, and he was losing no time. But in their restricted social life, where most of the men worked until five

o'clock or even later, there were fewer afternoon calls paid. Belle wondered with mild sisterly curiosity into

But though Harvey paid a call that afternoon it was not on any of the young women he knew. He went to see

Mrs. Gregory. She was at home he had arranged for that by telephone and the one butler of the

eighborhood admitted him. It was a truculent young man, for all his politeness, who confronted Mrs. Gregory

in her drawingroom a quietly truculent young man, who came to the point while he was still shaking

"You're not going to be glad to see me in a minute," he said in reply to her greeting.

"We won't quarrel before we begin, then," she said pleasantly. "Because I really never do anything I don't

But she gave him a second glance and her smile became a trifle forced. She knew all about Harvey and Sara

Lee. She had heard rumors of his disapproval also. Though she was not a clever nor a very keen woman, she

Harvey had prepared in his mind a summary of his position, and he delivered it with the rapidity and strength

"I know all about the Belgians, Mrs. Gregory," he said. "I'm sorry for them. So is every one, I suppose. But I

want to know if you think a girl of twenty ought to be over there practically at the Front, and alone?" He gave

her time to reply. "Would you like to have your daughter there, if you had one?"

"Humanity," said Mrs. Gregory, remembering the phrase she had written for a speech " humanity has no

He got up and stood on the hearthrug. He was singularly reminiscent of the time he had stood on Aunt

"Now see here, Mrs. Gregory," he said, "we'll stop beating about the bush, if you don't mind. She's got to

"No," he said slowly. "But I notice your society publishes her reports in the papers, and that the names of the

"We must have publicity to get money," she said. "It is hard to get. Sometimes I have had to make up the

"Then for God's sake bring her home! If the thing has to go on, send over there some of the middleaged

women who have no ties. Let `em get shot if they want to. They can write as good reports as she can, if that's

It could be done, of course," she said, thoughtfully. "But I must tell you this: I doubt if an older woman

could have got where she has. There is no doubt that her charm, her youth and beauty have helped her

The very whites of his eyes turned red then. He shouted furiously that for their silly work and their love of

publicity, they were trading on a girl's youth and beauty; that if anything happened to her he would publish

the truth in every newspaper in the country; that they would at once recall Sara Lee or he would placard the

city with what they were doing. These were only a few of the things he threw at her.

When he was out of breath he jerked the picture of the little house of mercy out of his pocket and flung it into

"There!" he said. "Do you know where that house is? It's in a ruined village. She hasn't said that, has she?

Well, look at the masonry there. That's a shell hole in the street. That soldier's got a gun. Why? Because the

Mrs. Gregory looked at the picture. Sara Lee smiled into the sun. And Rene, ignorant that his single rifle was

"I shall report your view to the society," she said coldly. "I understand how you feel, but I fail to see the

"I guess you see all right!" he flung at her. "She's my future wife. If you hadn't put this nonsense into her head

we'd be married now and she'd be here in God's country and not living with a lot of foreigners who don't

know a good woman when they see one. I want her back, that's all. But I want her back safe. And if anything

He went out then, and was for leaving without his hat or coat, but the butler caught him at the door. Out in the

spring sunlight he walked rapidly, still seething, remembering other bitter things he had meant to say, and

Mrs. Gregory's account of his visit she reported at a meeting specially called. The narrative lost nothing in the

repetition. But the kindly women who sat in the church house sewing or knitting listened to what Harvey had

said and looked troubled. They liked Sara Lee, and many of them had daughters of their own.

The photograph was passed around. Undoubtedly Sara Lee was living in a ruined village. Certainly ruined

villages were only found very near the Front. And Rene unquestionably held a gun. Tales of German

brutalities to women had come and were coming constantly to their ears. Mabel Andrews had written to them

Briefly, the sense of the meeting was that Harvey had been brutal, but that he was right. An older woman in a

safe place they might continue to support, but none of them would assume the responsibility of the crushing

To be quite frank, possibly Harvey's appeal would have carried less weight had it not coincided with Sara

Lee's request for more money. Neither one alone would have brought about the catastrophe, but altogether

they made question and answer, problem and solution. Money was scarce. Demands were heavy. None of

them except Mrs. Gregory had more than just enough. And there was this additional situation to face: there

Joifre had said, "I nibble them." But to nibble a hole in the Germany Army might take years. They had sent

Oddly enough, it was Harvey's sister Belle who made the only protest against the recall.

"Of course, I want her back," she said slowly. "You'd understand better if you had to live with Harvey. I'm

sorry, Mrs. Gregory, that he spoke to you as he did, but he's nearly crazy." She eyed the assembly with her

tired shrewd eyes. "I'm no talker," she went on, "but Sara Lee has done a big thing. We don't realize, I guess,

And in spite of Belle's protest, that remained the sense of the meeting. It was put to the vote and decided to

recall Sara Lee. She could bring a report of conditions, and if she thought it wise an older woman could go

Belle was very quiet that evening. After dinner she went to Harvey's room and found him dressing to go out.

"I'm going with a crowd to the theater," he said. "First week of the summer stock company, you know."

He said nothing, but his hands shook somewhat. "And I think," Belle said, "that you will be sorry for what

By the time Henri was well enough to resume his former activities it was almost the first of May. The winter

quiet was over with a vengeance, and the Allies were hammering hard with their first tolerably full supply of

Cheering reports came daily to the little house , of rapidly augmenting armies, of big guns on caterpillar

trucks that were moving slowly up to the Allied Front. Great Britain had at last learned her lesson, that only

shells of immense destructiveness were of any avail against the German batteries. She was moving heaven

and earth to get them, but the supply was still inadequate. With the new shells experiments were being made

in barrage fire costly experiments now and then; but the Allies were apt in learning the ugly game of

Only on the Belgian Front was there small change. The shattered army was being freshly outfitted. England

was sending money and ammunition, and on the sand dunes small bodies of fresh troops drilled and smiled

grimly and drilled again. But there were not, as in England and in France, great bodies of young men to draw

Yet a wave of renewed courage had come with the sun and the green fields. And conditions had improved for

the Belgians in other ways. They were being paid, for one thing, with something like regularity. Food was

better and more plentiful. One day Henri appeared at the top of the street and drove down triumphantly a

small unclipped horse, which trundled behind it a vertical boiler on wheels with fire box and stovepipe.

"A portable kitchen!" he explained. "See, here for soup and here for coffee. And more are coming."

But he protested almost violently. He even put the question to the horse, and blowing in his ear made him

She was needed, indeed. To the great base hospital at La Panne went more and more wounded men. But to

the little house of mercy came the small odds and ends in increasing numbers. Medical men were scarce, and

badly overworked. There was talk, for a time, of sending a surgeon to the little house, but it came to nothing.

La Panne was not far away, and all the surgeons they could get there were not too many.

So the little house went on much as before. Henri had moved to the mill. He was at work again, and one day,

in the King's villa and quietly, because of many reasons, Henri, a very white and erect Henri, received a

But though he and the men who served under him worked hard, they could not always perform miracles. The

German planes still outnumbered the Allied ones. They had grown more daring with the spring, too, and

whatever Henri might learn of ground operations, he could not foretell those of the air.

On a moonlight night in early May Sara Lee, setting out her dressings, heard a man running up the street.

Rene challenged him sharply, only to step aside. It was Henri. He burst in on Sara Lee.

"From the air. They may pass over, but there are twelve taubes, and they are circling overhead."

The first bomb dropped then in the street. It was white moonlight and the Germans must have seen that there

were no troops. Probably it was as Henri said later, that they had learned of the little house, and since it

The house of the mill went with the second bomb. Then followed a deafening uproar as plane after plane

dropped its shells on the dead town. Marie and Sara Lee were in the cellar by that time, but the cellar was

scarcely safer than the floor above. From a bombardment by shells from guns miles away there was

protection. From a bomb dropped from the sky, the floors above were practically useless.

Only Henri and Rene remained on the street floor. Henri was extinguishing lights. In the passage Rene stood,

not willing to take refuge until Henri, whom he adored, had done so. For a moment the uproar ceased, and in

a spirit of bravado Rene stepped out into the moonlight and made a gesture of derision into the air.

But Rene's figure against the moonlight was gone. Henri ran to the doorway then and found him lying, his

head on the little step where he had been wont to sit and whittle and sing his Tipperaree. He was dead. Henri

carried him in and laid him in the little passage, very reverently. Then he went below.

"A foolish boy," said Henri, a catch in his throat. "He is, I think, watching these fiends of the air, from some

He groped for her hand in the darkness, and so they stood, hand in hand, like two children, waiting for what

It was not until the thing was over that he told her. He had gone up first and so that she would not happen on

his silent figure unwarned, had carried Rene to the open upper floor, where he lay, singularly peaceful, face

"Good night, little brother," Henri said to him, and left him there with a heavy heart. Never again would Rene

sit and whittle on the doorstep and sing his tuneless Tipperaree. Never again would he gaze with boyish

Henri stared up at the sky. The moon looked down, cold. and cruelly bright, on the vanishing squadron of

death, on the destroyed town and on the boy's white face. Somewhere, Henri felt, vanishing like the German

taubes, but to peace instead of war, was moving Rene's brave and smiling spirit a boyish angel, eager and

Another sentry took Rene's place the next day, but the little house had lost something it could not regain. And

Jean brought out the mail that day. For Sara Lee, moving about silent and redeyed, there was a letter from

Mr. Travers. He inclosed a hundred pounds and a clipping from a London newspaper entitled The Little

"Evidently," he wrote, "you were right and we were wrong. Onehalf of the inclosed check is from my wife,

who takes this method of showing her affectionate gratitude. The balance is from myself. Once, some months

ago, I said to you that almost you restored my faith in human nature. Today I may say that, in these hours of

sorrow for us all, what you have done and are doing has brought into my gray day a breath of hope."

There was another clipping, but no comment. It recorded the death of a Reginald Alexander Travers, aged

It was then that Sara Lee, who was by way of thinking for herself those days, and of thinking clearly,

recognized the strange new selfabnegation of the English their attitude not so much of suppressing their

private griefs as of refusing to obtrude them. A strongly individualistic people, they were already

commencing to think nationally. Grief was a private matter, to be borne privately. To the world they must

present an unbroken front, an unshaken and unshakable faith. A new attitude, and a strange one, for

A people who had for centuries insisted not only on its rights but on its privileges was now giving as freely as

ever it had demanded. It was as though, having hoarded all those years, it had but been hoarding against the

day of payment. As it had received it gave in money, in effort, in life. And without pretext.

So the Traverses, having given up all that had made life for them, sent a clipping only, and no comment. Sara

Lee, through' a mist of tears, saw them alone in their drawingroom, having tea as usual, and valiantly

speaking of small things, and bravely facing the future, but never, in the bitterest moments, making complaint

Would America, she wondered, if her hour came, be so brave? Harvey had a phrase for such things. It was

"stand the gaff." Would America stand the gaff so well? Courage was America's watchword, but a courage of

the body rather than of the soul physical courage, not moral. What would happen if America entered the

strnggle and the papers were filled, as were the British and the French, with long casualty lists, each name a

And then, before long, it was Sara Lee's turn to, stand the gaff. There was another letter, a curiously

incoherent one from Harvey's sister. She referred to something that the society had done, and hoped that Sara

Lee would take it in kindness, as it was meant. Harvey was well and much happier. She was to try to

understand Harvey's part. He had been almost desperate. Evidently the letter had preceded one that should

have arrived at the same time. Sara Lee was sadly puzzled. She went to Henri with it, but he could make

The next night Henri was to go through the lines again. Since his wounding he had been working on the

Allied side, and fewer lights there were in his district that flashed the treacherous message across the flood,

between night and morning. But now it was imperative that he go through the German lines again. It was

feared that with grappling hooks the enemy was slowly and cautiously withdrawing the barbed wire from the

On the night he was to go Henri called Sara Lee from the crowded salle a manger and drawing her into the

"Mademoiselle," he said gravely, "once before, long ago, you permitted me to kiss you. Will you do that for

She kissed him at once gravely. Once she would have flushed. She did not now. For there was a change in

Sara Lee as well as in her outlook. She had been seeing for months the shortness of life, the brief tenure men

held on it, the value of such happiness as might be for the hours that remained. She was a woman now, for all

her slim young body and her charm of youth. Values had changed. To love, and to show that love, to cheer, to

comfort and help that was necessary, because soon the chance might be gone, and there would be long

Much of Sara Lee's life at home had faded. She seemed to be two people. One was the girl who had knitted

the afghan for Anna, and had hidden it away from Uncle James' kind but curious eyes. And one was this

present Sara Lee, living on the edge of eternity, and seeing men die or suffer horribly, not to gain anything

except perhaps some honorable advancement for their souls but that there might be preserved, at any cost,

the right of honest folk to labor in their fields, to love, to pray, and at last to sleep in the peace of God.

She had lost the past and she dared not look into the future. So she was living each day as it came, with its

labor, its love, its prayers and at last its sleep. Even Harvey seemed remote and stern and bitter. She reread

his letters often, but they were forced. And after a time she realized another quality in them. They were

selfcentered. It was his anxiety, his loneliness, his humiliation. Sara Lee's eyes were looking out, those days,

She realized this, but she never formulated it, even to herself. What she did acknowledge was a growing fear

of the reunion which must come sometime that he was cherishing still further bitterness against that day,

that he would say things that he would regret later. Sometimes the thought of that day came to her when she

Henri had not returned when, the second day after Rene's death, the letter came which recalled her. She

opened it eagerly. Though from Harvey there usually came at the best veiled reproach, the society had always

She read it twice before she understood, and it was only when she read Belle's letter again that she began to

She was very close to hating him that day. He had never understood. She would go back to him, as she had

promised; but always, all the rest of their lives, there would be this barrier between them. To the barrier of his

bitterness would be added her own resentment. She could never even talk to him of her work, of those great

days when in her small way she had felt herself a part of the machinery of mercy of the war.

Harvey had lost something out of Sara Lee's love for him. He had done it himself, madly, despairingly. She

still loved him, she felt. Nothing could change that or her promise to him. But with that love there was

something now of fear. And she felt, too, that after all the years she had known him she had not known him at

all. The Harvey she had known was a tender and considerate man, softspoken, slow to wrath, always gentle.

It was the result of her upbringing, probably, that she had no thought of revolt. Her tie to Harvey was a real

tie. By her promise to him her life was no longer hers to order. It belonged to some one else, to be ordered for

When Henri returned, toward dawn of the following night, he did not come alone. Sara Lee, rising early,

found two men in her kitchen one of them Henri, who was making coffee, and a soldier in a graygreen

uniform, with a bad bruise over one eye and a sulky face. His hands were tied, but otherwise he sat at ease,

"See, I have brought you a gift!" he exclaimed on seeing Sara Lee. "What shall we do with him? Send him to

The prisoner was only a boy, such a boy as Henri himself; but a peasant, and muscular. Beside his bulk Henri

"He is young, and a Bavarian," he said. "Other wise I should have killed him, for he fought hard. He has but

There was another conference in the little house that morning, but Henri's prisoner could tell little. He had

heard nothing of an advance. Further along the line it was said that there was much fighting. He sat there,

pale and bewildered and very civil, and in the end his frightened politeness brought about a change in the

attitude of the men who questioned him. Hate all Germans as they must, who had suffered so grossly, this

They sent him on at last, and Sara Lee was free to tell Henri her news. But she had grown very wise as to

Henri's moods, and she hesitated. A certain dissatisfaction had been growing in the boy for some time, a

sense of hopelessness. Further along the spring had brought renewed activity to the Allied armies. Great

But his own men stood in their trenches, or what passed for trenches, or lay on their hours of relief in such

wretched quarters as could be found, still with no prospect of action. No great guns, drawn by heavy tractors,

came down the roads toward the trenches by the sea. Steady bombarding, incessant sniping and no movement

on either side that was the Belgian Front during the first year of the war. Inaction, with that eating anxiety

as to what was going on in the occupied territory, was the portion of the heroic small army that stretched from

And Henri's nerves were not good. He was unhappy that always and he was not yet quite recovered from

his wounds. There was on his mind, too, a certain gun which moved on a railway track, back and forth,

behind the German lines, doing the work of many. He had tried to get to that gun, and failed. And he hated

Certainly in this story of Sara Lee and of Henri, whose other name must not be known, allowance must be

Sara Lee told him that evening of her recall, told him when the shuffling of many feet in the street told of the

"But you will not go?" he said. "It is impossible! You you are needed, mademoiselle."

"Perhaps we can arrange that. It does not cost so much. I have friends and think, mademoiselle, how many

know now of what you are doing, and love you for it. Some of them would contribute, surely."

He was desperately revolving expedients in his mind. He could himself do no more than he had done. He, or

rather Jean and he together, had been bearing a full half of the expense of the little house since the beginning.

But he dared not tell her that. And though he spoke hopefully, he knew well that he could raise nothing from

the Belgians he knew best. Henri came of a class that held its fortunes in land, and that land was now in

"We will arrange it somehow," he said with forced cheerfulness. "No beautiful thing and this is surely

"Not exactly. But I think he went to some one and said I should not be here alone. You can understand how

he feels. We were going to be married very soon, and then I decided to come. It made an awful upset."

Henri stood with folded arms and listened. At first he said nothing. When he spoke it was in a voice of

"So for a stupid convention he would destroy this beautiful thing you have made! Does he know your work?

"That is enough. You are needed. You are willing to stay. I shall attend to the money. It is arranged."

"You don't understand," said Sara Lee desperately. "I am engaged to him. I can't wreck his life, can I?"

"Would it wreck your life?" he demanded. "Tell me that and I shall know how to reason with you."

Heavy tramping in the passage told of the arrival of the first men. They did not talk and laugh as usual. As

well as they could they came quietly. For Rene had been a good friend to many of them, and had admitted on

slack nights many a weary man who had no ticket. Much as the neighbors had entered the house back home

after Uncle James had gone away, came these bearded men that night. And Sara Lee, hearing their muffled

"We can talk about it later," she said. "We mustn't quarrel. I owe so much to you, Henri."

Suddenly Henri caught her by the arm and turned her about so that she faced the lamp.

"Do you love him?" he demanded. "Sara Lee, look at me!" Only he pronounced it Saralie. "He has done a

"I don't think you mean that." Bad strategy that, for he drew her to him. His arms were like steel, and it was a

"I would die for you, Saralie!" he repeated fiercely. "That would be easier, far, than living without you. There

is nothing that matters but you. Listen I would put everything I have my honor, my life, my hope of

eternity on one side of the scale and you on the other. And I would choose you. Is that love?" He freed her.

"It's insanity," said Sara Lee angrily. "You don't mean it. And I don't want that kind of love, if that is what

"That's not true!" she flashed at him. "He is sending for me, not to get me back to him, but to get me back to

"You are going back to him," he said slowly; "and you will always keep these days of ours buried in your

beart. Is that it? His eyes softened. "I am to be a memory! Do you know what I think? I think you care for me

more than you know. We have lived a lifetime together in these months. You know me better than you know

him, already. We have faced death together. That is a strong tie. And I have held you in my arms. Do you

"I shall not let you forget me. You may go I cannot prevent that perhaps. But wherever I am; Saralie, I shall

stand between that lover of yours and you. And sometime I shall come from this other side of the world, and I

shall find you, and you will come back with me. Back to this country our country."

They were boyish words, but back of them was the iron determination of a man. His eyes seemed sunken in

his head. His face was white. But there was almost a prophetic ring in his voice.

Sara Lee went out and left him there, went out rather terrified and bewildered, and refusing absolutely to look

Late in May she started for home. It had not been necessary to close the little house. An Englishwoman of

mature years and considerable wealth, hearing from Mr. Travers of Sara Lee's recall, went out a day or two

before she left and took charge. She was a kindly woman, in deep mourning; and some of the ache left Sara

Perhaps, too, Mrs. Cameron understood some of the things that had puzzled her before. She had been a trifle

skeptical perhaps about Sara Lee before she saw her. A young girl alone among an army of men! She was a

good woman herself, and not given to harsh judgments, but the thing had seemed odd. But Sara Lee in her

little house, as virginal, as without sexconsciousness as a child, Sara Lee with her shabby clothes and her

stained hands and her honest eyes this was not only a good girl, this was a brave and highspirited and

And after an evening in the house of mercy, with the soldiers openly adoring and entirely respectful, Mrs.

"You must let me thank you," she said. "You have made me feel what I have not felt since"

She stopped. Her mourning was only a month old. "I see tonight that, after all, many things may be gone,

The next day she asked Sara Lee to stay with her, at least through the summer. Sara Lee hesitated, but at last

she agreed to cable. As Henri had disappeared with the arrival of Mrs. Cameron it was that lady's chauffeur

She had sent the cable to Harvey. It was no longer a matter of the Ladies' Aid. It was between Harvey and

"Now or never," was the message Harvey sent out of his black despair, across the Atlantic to the little house

Henri was half mad those last days. Jean tried to counsel him, but he was irritable, almost savage. And Jean

understood. The girl had grown deep into his own heart. Like Henri, he believed that she was going back to

unhappiness; he even said so to her in the car, on that last sad day when Sara Lee, having visited Rene's grave

and prayed in the ruined church, said goodby to the little house, and went away, tearless at the last, because

It was not for some time that Jean spoke what was in his mind, and when he had done so she turned to him

"You are wrong, Jean. He is the kindest of men. Once I am back, and safe, he will be very different. I'm

"You think then, mademoiselle, that he will forget all these months he will never be unhappy over them?"

"Why should he?" said Sara Lee proudly. "When I tell him everything he will understand. And he will be

At the wharf in Dunkirk they found Henri, a pale but composed Henri. Jean's brows contracted. He had

thought that the boy would follow his advice and stay away. But Henri was there.

It was as well, perhaps, for Sara Lee had brought him a letter, one of those missives from the trenches which

"Everything is prepared," he said. "It is the British Admiralty boat, and one of the officers has offered his

He appeared entirely calm. He saw to carrying Sara Lee's small bag on board; he chatted with the officers; he

even wandered over to a hospital ship moored near by and exchanged civilities with a wounded man in a

chair on the deck. Perhaps he swaggered a bit too much, for Jean watched him with some anxiety. He saw

that the boy was taking it hard. His eyes were very sunken now, and he moved his right arm stiffly, as though

Jean did not like leavetakings. Particularly he did not like taking leave of Sara Lee. Some time before the

boat sailed he kissed her hand, and then patted it and went away in the car without looking back.

The boat was preparing to get under way. Henri was standing by her very quietly. He had not slept the night

before, but then there were many nights when Henri did not sleep. He had wandered about, smoking

He could see no hope anywhere. America was far away, and peaceful. Very soon the tranquillity of it all

would make the last months seem dreamlike and unreal. She would forget Belgium, forget him. Or she would

remember him as a soldier who had once loved her. Once loved her, because she had never seemed to realize

the lasting quality of his love. She had always felt that he would forget her. If he could only make her believe

He had written a bit of a love letter on the little table at Dunkirk that morning, written it with the hope that the

sight of the written words might carry conviction where all his protests had failed.

"I shall love you all the years of my life," he wrote. "At any time, in any place, you may come to me and

know that I am waiting. Great love like this comes only once to any man, and once come to him it never goes

away. At any time in the years to come you may know with certainty that you are still to me what you are

"Sometimes I think, dearest I may call you that once, now that you have left me that far away you will

hear this call of mine and come back to me. Perhaps you will never come. Perhaps I shall not live. I feel

"If that is to be, then think of me somewhere, perhaps with Rene by my side, since he, too, loved you. And I

shall still be calling you, and waiting. Perhaps even beyond the stars they have need of a little house of

He had the letter in the pocket of his tunic, and at last the moment came when the boat must leave. Suddenly

Henri knew that he could not allow her to cross to England alone. The last few days had brought many stories

of submarine attacks. Here, so far north, the Germans were particularly active. They had for a long time

lurked in waiting for this British Admiralty boat, with its valuable cargo, its officers and the government

"I allowed you to come over alone. I shiver when I think of it. I shall take you back myself."

"Probably not. But can you think of me standing safe on that quay and letting you go into danger alone?"

"I know that. I have never seen you afraid. But if you wish to see a coward, look at me. I am a coward for

He put his hand into his pocket. It occurred to him to give her the letter now so that if anything happened she

would at least have had it. He wanted no mistake about that appointment beyond the stars. But the great

world of eternity was very large, and they must have a definite understanding about that meeting at the little

Perhaps he had a little fever that day. He was alternately flushed and pale; and certainly he was not quite

rational. His hand shook as he brought out her letter and with it the other letter, from the Front.

"Have you the time to come with me?" Sara Lee asked doubtfully. "I want you to come, of course, but if your

"I shall go away," he said, "while you read it. And perhaps you will not destroy it, because I should like to

He went away at once, saluting as he passed other officers, who gravely saluted him. On the deck of the

hospital ship the invalid touched his cap. Word was going about, in the stealthy manner of such things, that

Henri whose family name we may not know, was a brave man and doing brave things.

The steamer had not yet cast off. As usual, it was to take a flying start from the harbor, for it was just outside

the harbor that the wolves of the sea lay in wait. Henri, alone at last, opened his letter, and stood staring at it.

There was again movement behind the German line, a matter to be looked into, as only he could do it.

Henri looked along the shore to where but a few miles away lay the ragged remnant of his country. And he

looked forward to where Sara Lee, his letter in her hand, was staring blindly at nothing. Then he looked out

After that first moment of indecision he never hesitated. He stood on the deck and watched, rather frozen and

rigid, and with a mind that had ceased working, while the steamer warped out from the quay. If in his

subconsciousness there was any thought it was doubtless that he had done his best for a long time, and that he

had earned the right to protect for a few hours the girl he loved. That, too, there had been activity along the

Perhaps subconsciously those things were there. He himself was conscious of no thought, of only a dogged

determination to get Sara Lee across the channel safely. He put everything else behind him. He counted no

The little admiralty boat sped on. In the bow, on the bridge, and at different stations lookouts kept watch. The

lifeboats were hung overboard, ready to lower instantly. On the horizon a British destroyer steamed leisurely.

Henri stood for a long time on the deck. The land fell away quickly. From a clear silhouette of the town

against the sky the dunes, thespire of the cathedral, the roof of the mairie it became vague, shadowy the

Henri roused himself. He was very thirsty, and the wound in his arm ached. When he raised his hand to salute

It was a very grave Sara Lee he found in the officer's cabin when he went inside later on. She was sitting on

the long seat below the open port, her hat slightly askew and her hands folded in her lap. Her bag was beside

For the first time Sara Lee was realizing the full value of the thing she was throwing away. She had

persistently discounted it until now. She had been grateful for it. She had felt unworthy of it. But now, on the

edge of leaving it, she felt that something infinitely precious and very beautiful was going out of her life. She

For the first time, too, she was allowing herself to think of certain contingencies that were now forever

impossible. For instance, suppose she had stayed with Mrs. Cameron? Suppose she had broken her promise

to Harvey and remained at the little house? Suppose she had done as Henri had so wildly urged her, and had

There was a certain element of caution in the girl. It made the chances she had taken rather more courageous,

indeed, because she had always counted the cost. But marriage was not a matter for taking chances. One

should know not only the man, but his setting, though she would not have thought of it in that way. Not only

And Henri was to her still a figure, not so much now of mystery as of detachment. Except Jean he had no

intimates. He had no family on the only side of the line she knew. He had not even a country.

She had reached that point when Henri came below and saluted her stiffly from the doorway.

I am not ill," he said, and threw himself into the corner of the seat. "You have read it?"

She nodded. Even thinking of it brought a lump into her throat. He bent forward, but he did not touch her.

"I meant it, Saralie," he said. "Sometimes men are infatuated, and write what they do not mean. They are

Not then, nor during the three days in London, did he so much as take her hand. He was not well. He ate

nothing, and at night he lay awake and drank a great deal of water. Once or twice he found her looking at him

He had known from the beginning what he was doing. But he did not touch her, because in his heart he knew

that where once he had been worthy he was no longer worthy. He had left his work for a woman.

It is true that he had expected to go back at once. But the Philadelphia, which had been listed to sail the next

day, was held up by a strike in Liverpool, and he waited on, taking such hours as she could give him,

feverishly anxious to make her happy, buying her little gifts mostly flowers, which she wore tucked in her

He was alternately gay and silent. They walked across the Thames by the Parliament buildings, and midway

across he stopped and looked long at the stream. And they went to the Zoological Gardens, where he gravely

named one of the sea lions for Colonel Lilias because of its mustache, and insisted on saluting it each time

before he flung it a fish. Once he soberly gathered up a very new baby camel, all legs, in his arms, and

They dined together every night, very modestly, sitting in some crowded restaurant perhaps, but seeing little

but each other. Sara Lee had bought a new hat in London black, of course, but faced with white. He adored

her in it. He would sit for long moments, his elbows propped on the table, his blond hair gleaming in the

But one evening he called for her at Morley's, a white and crushed boy, needing all that she could give him

and much more. He came as a man goes to the woman he loves when he is in trouble, much as a child to his

mother. Sara Lee; coming down to the reception room, found him alone there, walking rapidly up and down.

"I do not know. I ran away, mademoiselle. I am a traitor. And the Germans broke through last night."

"Don't you think," Sara Lee said in a frozen voice, "that is what I have done? I let you come."

"You? You are taking the blame? Mademoiselle, I have enough to bear without that."

He explained further, still standing in his rigid attitude. If he had been white before at times he was ghastly

now. It had not been an attack in force. A small number had got across and had penetrated beyond the railway

line. There had been handtohand fighting in the road beyond the poplars. But it looked more like an

experiment, an endeavor to discover the possibility of a real advance through the inundation; or perhaps a

"But you might not have known," she protested wildly. "Even if you had been there, Henri, you might not

have known." She knew something of war by that time. "How could you have told that a small movement of

"I did not tell you," he said, looking away from her. "There had been a warning. I disregarded it."

He went back to Belgium that night. Sara Lee, at the last, held out her hand. She was terrified for him, and

"I shall not touch your hand," he said. "I have forfeited my right to do that." Then, seeing what was in her

face, he reassured her. "I shall not do that," he said. "It would be easier. But I shall have to go back and see

He was the old Henri to the last, however. He went carefully over her steamship ticket, and inquired with

When he left her at last he went to the door, very erect and soldierly. But he turned there and stood for a

moment looking at her, as though through all that was coming he must have with him, to give him strength,

The elderly chambermaid, coming into Sara Lee's room the next morning, found her fully dressed in the frock

It was early in June when at last the lights went down behind the back drop and came up in front, to show

Sara Lee knitting again, though not by the fire. The amazing interlude was over.

Over, except in Sara Lee's heart. The voyage had been a nightmare. She had been ill for one thing a

combination of seasickness and heartsickness. She had allowed Henri to come to England with her, and the

Germans had broken through. All the good she had done and she had helped was nothing to this mischief

It had been a small raid. She gathered that from the papers on board. But that was not the vital thing. What

mattered was that she had let a man forget his duty to his country in his solicitude for her.

But as the days went on the excitement of her return dulled the edge of her misery somewhat. The thing was

done. She could do only one thing to help. She would never go back, never again bring trouble and suffering

She had a faint hope that Harvey would meet her at the pier. She needed comforting and soothing, and

perhaps a bit of praise. She was so very tired; depressed, too, if the truth be known. She needed a hand to lead

her back to her old place on the stage, and kind faces to make her forget that she had ever gone away.

Because that was what she had to do. She must forget Henri and the little house on the road to the poplar

trees; and most of all, she must forget that because of her Henri had let the Germans through.

But Harvey did not meet her. There was a telegram saying he would meet her train if she wired when she was

leaving an exultant message breathing forgiveness and signed "with much love." She flushed when she read

Of course he could not meet her in New York. This was not the Continent in wartime, where convention had

died of a great necessity. And he was not angry, after all. A great wave of relief swept over her. But it was

odd how helpless she felt. Since her arrival in England months before there had always been Henri to look

after things for her. It was incredible to recall how little she had done for herself.

Was she glad to be back? She did not ask herself. It was as though the voyage had automatically detached her

from that other Sara Lee of the little house. That was behind her, a dream a mirage or a memory. Here, a

trifle confused by the bustle, was once again the Sara Lee who had knitted for Anna, and tended the plants in

the diningroom window, and watched Uncle James slowly lowered into his quiet grave.

Part of her detachment was voluntary. She could not bear to remember. She had but to close her eyes to see

Henri's tragic face that last night at Morley's. And part of the detachment was because, after all, the interlude

had been but a matter of months, and reaching out familiar hands to her were the habits and customs and

It was strange how Henri's face haunted her. She could close her eyes and see it, line by line, his very

swagger for he did swagger, just a little; his tall figure and unruly hair; his long, narrow, muscular hands.

Strange and rather uncomfortable. Because she could not summon Harvey's image at all. She tried to bring

before her, that night in the train speeding west, his solid figure and kind eyes as they would greet her the

next day tried, and failed. All she got was the profile of the photograph, and the stubborn angle of the jaw.

She was up very early the next morning, and it was then, as the train rolled through familiar country, that she

began to find Harvey again. A flush of tenderness warmed her. She must be very kind to him because of all

The train came to a stop. Rather breathless Sara Lee went out on the platform. Harvey was there, in the

crowd. He did not see her at first. He was looking toward the front of the train. So her first glimpse of him

was the view of the photograph. His hat was off, and his hair, carefully brushed back, gave him the eager

He was a strong and manly figure, as unlike Henri as an oak is unlike one of Henri's own tall and swaying

poplars. Sara Lee drew a long breath. Here after all were rest and peace; love and gentleness; quiet days and

still evenings. No more crowds and wounds and weary men, no more great thunderings of guns, no

Then Harvey saw her, and the gleam of happiness and relief in his eyes made her own eyes misty. She saw

even in that first glance that he looked thinner and older. A pang of remorse shot through her. Was happiness

always bought at the cost of happiness? Did one always take away in order to give? Not in so many words,

There was no reserve in Harvey's embrace. He put his arms about her and held her close. He did not speak at

Suddenly Sara Lee was very happy. All her doubts were swept away by his voice, his arms. There was no

thrill for her in his caress, but there were peace and quiet joy. It was enough for her, just then, that she had

"You are thin," he said. "You're not pale, but you are thin." And in a harder voice: "What did they do to you

But he did not wait for a reply. He did not seem to want one. He picked up her bag, and guiding her by the

"A lot of folks wanted to come and meet you," he said, "but I steered them off. You'd have thought Roosevelt

"I expect the Ladies' Aid Society wanted to get into the papers again," he said rather grimly. "They are merry

"Well, I do," he said, and brought her to a stop facing a smart little car, very new, very gay.

"Surest thing you know. Or, rather, it's ours. Had a few war babies, and they grew up."

Sara Lee looked at it, and for just an instant, a rather sickening instant, she saw Henri's shattered low car,

Sara Lee had intended to go to Anna's, for a time at least. But she found that Belle was expecting her and

"She's moved the baby in with the others," Harvey explained as he took the wheel. "Wait until you see your

He said nothing for a time. He was new to driving a car, and the traffic engrossed him. But when they had

"Good God, how I've been hungry for you!" he said. "I guess I was pretty nearly crazy sometimes." He

glanced at her apprehensively, but if she knew his connection with her recall she showed no resentment. As a

matter of fact there was in his voice something that reminded her of Henri, the same deeper note, almost

She was, indeed, asking herself very earnestly what was there in her of all people that should make two men

care for her as both Henri and Harvey cared. In the humility of all modest women she was bewildered. It

made her rather silent and a little sad. She was so far from being what they thought her.

Harvey, stealing a moment from the car to glance at her, saw something baffling in her face.

He drew a deep satisfied breath. "I used to think of you over there, and all those foreigners in uniform

And again, as long before, he read into her passivity his own passion, and was deeply content.

Belle was waiting on the small front porch. There was an anxious frown on her face, and she looked first, not

at Sara Lee, but at Harvey. What she saw there evidently satisfied her, for the frown disappeared. She kissed

All that afternoon, much to Harvey's resentment, Sara Lee received callers. The Ladies' Aid came en masse

and went out to the diningroom and there had tea and cake. Harvey disappeared when they came.

"You are back," he said, "and safe, and all that. "But it's not their fault. And I'll be hanged if I'll stand round

He got his hat and then, finding her alone in a back hall for a moment, reverted uneasily to the subject.

"There are two sides to every story," he said. "They're going to knife me this afternoon, all right. Damned

"Harvey," she said slowly, "I want to know now just what you did. I'm not angry. I've never been angry. But I

It was a very onesided story that Harvey told her, standing in the little back hall, with Belle's children

hanging over the staircase and begging for cake. Yet in the main it was true. He had reached his limit of

endurance. She was in danger, as the photograph plainly showed. And a fellow had a right to fight for his

"I wanted you back, that's all," he ended. And added an anticlimax by passing a plate of sliced jelly roll

Sara Lee stood there for a moment after he had gone. He was right, or at least he had been within his rights.

She had never even heard of the new doctrine of liberty for women. There was nothing in her training to

teach her revolt. She was engaged to Harvey; already, potentially, she belonged to him. He had interfered

And also there was in the back of her mind a feeling that was almost guilt. She had let Henri tell her he loved

her. She had even kissed him. And there had been many times in the little house when Harvey, for days at a

time, had not even entered her thoughts. There was, therefore, a very real tenderness in the face she lifted for

"Don't let any reporters in," he said warningly. "This is strictly our affair. It's a private matter. It's nobody's

Belle assented, but she was uneasy. She knew that Harvey was unreasonably, madly jealous of Sara Lee's

work at the little house of mercy, and she knew him well enough to know that sooner or later he would show

that jealousy. She felt, too, that the girl should have been allowed her small triumph without interference.

There had been interference enough already. But it was easier to yield to Harvey than to argue with him.

It was rather a worried Belle who served tea that afternoon in her dining room, with Mrs. Gregory pouring;

the more uneasy, because already she divined a change in Sara Lee. She was as lovely as ever, even lovelier.

But she had a poise, a steadiness, that were new; and silences in which, to Belle's shrewd eyes, she seemed to

Reporters clamored to see Sara Lee that day, and, failing to see her, telephoned Harvey at his office to ask if

it was true that she had been decorated by the King. He was short to the point of affront.

"I haven't heard anything about it," he snapped. "And I wouldn't say if I had. But it's not likely. What d'you

fellows think she was doing anyhow? Leading a charge? She was running a soup kitchen. That's all."

He hung up the receiver with a jerk, but shortly after that he fell to pacing his small office. She had not said

anything about being decorated, but the reporters had said it had been in a London newspaper. If she had not

told him that, there were probably many things she had not told him. But of course there had been very little

Sara Lee had had a hard day. The children loved her. In the intervals of calls they crawled over her, and the

"Saralie!" said the child, over and over; "Saralie! That's your name. I love your name."

There was an oppression on her too. Her very bedroom thrust on her her approaching marriage. This was her

own furniture, for her new home. It was beautiful, simple and good. But she was not ready for marriage. She

had been too close to the great struggle to be prepared to think in terms of peace so soon. Perhaps, had she

dared to look deeper than that, she would have found something else, a something she had not counted on.

She and Belle had a little time after the visitors had gone, before Harvey came home. They sat in Belle's

bedroom, and her sentences were punctuated by little backs briskly presented to have small garments

"Did you understand my letter?" she asked. "I was sorry I had sent it, but it was too late then."

"He was about out of his mind," Belle said in her worried voice. "Stand still, Mary Ellen! He went to Mrs.

Gregory, and I suppose he said a good bit. You know the way he does. Anyhow, she was very angry. She

called a special meeting, and I tried to prevent their recalling you. He doesn't know that, of course."

"Well, I felt as though it was your work," Belle said rather uncomfortably. "Bring me the comb, Alice. I

guess we get pretty narrow here and I've been following things more closely since you went over. I know

more than I did. And, of course, after one marries there isn't much chance. There are children and " Her face

"It's the London newspaper," she explained. "I've been taking it, but Harvey doesn't know. He doesn't care

"I don't believe I would," she said forlornly. "He won't like it. That's why I've never showed him that

Sara Lee dressed that evening in the white frock. She dressed slowly, thinking hard. All round her was the

shiny newness of her furniture, a trifle crowded in Belle's small room. Sara Lee had a terrible feeling of being

fastened in by it. Wherever she turned it gleamed. She felt surrounded, smothered.

She had meant to make a clean breast of things of the little house, and of Henri, and of the King, pinning

the medal on her shabby black jacket and shaking hands with her. Henri she must tell about not his name of

course, nor his madness, nor even his love. But she felt that she owed it to Harvey to have as few secrets from

him as possible. She would tell about what the boy had done for her, and how he, and he alone, had made it

Surely Harvey would understand. It was a page that was closed. It had held nothing to hurt him. She had

She stood by her window, thinking. And a breath of wind set the leaves outside to rustling. Instantly she was

back again in the little house, and the sound was not leaves, but the shuffling of many stealthy feet on the

cobbles of the street at night, that shuffling that was so like the rustling of leaves in a wood or the murmur of

It was clear to Sara Lee from the beginning of the evening that Harvey did not intend to hear her story. He did

not say so; indeed, for a time he did not talk at all. He sat with his arms round her, content just to have her

"I have a lot of arrears to make up," he said. "I've got to get used to having you where I can touch you.

Tonight when I go Upstairs I'm going to take that damned colorless photograph of you and throw it out the

"I must tell you about your photograph," she ventured. "It always stood on the mantel over the stove, and

"Died of pneumonia in some Godforsaken hole over there. He's left a wife and nothing much to keep her.

That's what comes of mixing in the other fellow's fight. I guess we can get the house as soon as we want it.

"Harvey," she said rather timidly, "you speak of the other fellow's fight. They say over there that we are sure

"Not on our life!" he replied brusquely. "And if you don't mind, honey, I don't care to hear about what they

think over there." He got up from his old place on the arm of her chair and stood on the rug. "I'd better tell

you now how I feel about this thing. I can't talk about it, that's all. We'll finish up now and let it go at that. I'm

sorry there's a war. I'll send money when I can afford it, to help the Belgians, though my personal opinion is

that they're getting theirs for what they did in the Congo. But I don't want to hear about what you did over

"I don't want to hurt you, honey," he said. "I love you with all my heart. But somehow I can't forget that you

left me and went over there when there was no reason for it. You put off our marriage, and I suppose we'd

"There's only one thing I want to know," he said. "And I've got a right to know that. You're a young girl, and

you're beautiful to me, anyhow. You've been over there with a lot of crazy foreigners." He got up again and

all the bitterness of the empty months was in his voice. "Did any of them was there anybody there you

"I could have stayed. The Englishwoman who took over my work asked me to stay on and help her."

"All right," he said. "I've suffered the tortures of the damned, but that fixes it. Now let's talk about

"Look here," he said. "I've got to get to all that gradually. I don't know that I'll ever get to it cheerfully. But I

can't talk about that place tonight. And I don't want to talk war. The whole business makes me sick. I've got

a car out of it, and if things keep on we may be able to get the Leete house. But there's no reason in it, no

But and here was something strange Sara Lee could find nothing else to talk about. The thing that she had

looked forward so eagerly to telling that was barred. And the small gossip of their little circle, purely

personal and trivial, held only faint interest for her. For the first time they had no common ground to meet on.

Yet it was a very happy man who went whistling to his room that night. He was rather proud of himself too.

After all the bitterness of the past months, he had been gentle and loving to Sara Lee. He had not scolded her.

In the next room he could hear her going quietly about, opening and closing the drawers of the new bureau,

moving a chair. Pretty soon, God willing, they need never be separated. He would have her always, to protect

But long after he was asleep Sara Lee stood at her window and listened to the leaves, so like the feet of weary

For the first time she was questioning the thing she had done. She loved Harvey but there were many kinds

of love. There was the love of Jean for Henri, and there was the wonderful love, though the memory now was

cruel and hurt her, of Henri for herself. And there was the love of Marie for the memory of Maurice the spy.

A small doubt crept into her mind. This feeling she had for Harvey was not what she had thought it was over

there. It was a thing that had belonged to a certain phase of her life. But that phase was over. It was, like

This Harvey of the new car and the increased income and the occasional hardness in his voice was not the

Harvey she had left. Or perhaps it was she who had changed. She wondered. She felt precisely the same,

tender toward her friends, unwilling to hurt them. She did not want to hurt Harvey.

But she did not love him as he deserved to be loved. And she had a momentary lift of the veil, when she saw

the long vista of the years, the two of them always together and always between them hidden, untouched, but

eating like a cancer, Harvey's resentment and suspicion of her months away from him.

There would always be a barrier between them. Not only on Harvey's side. There were things she had no

right to tell of Henri, of his love and care for her, and of that last terrible day when he realized what he had

That night, lying in the new bed, she faced that situation too. How much was she to blame? If Henri felt that

each life lost was lost by him wasn't the same true for her? Why had she allowed him to stay in London?

She lay there in the darkness and wondered what punishment he would receive. He had done so much for

them over there. Surely, surely, they would allow for that. But small things came back to her the awful

sight of the miller and his son, led away to death, with the sacks over their heads. The relentlessness of it all,

the expecting that men should give everything, even life itself, and ask for no mercy.

And this, too, she remembered: Once in a wild moment Henri had said he would follow her to America, and

that there he would prove to her that his and not Harvey's was the real love of her life the great love, that

comes but once to any woman, and to some not at all. Yet on that last night at Morley's he had said what she

now felt was a final farewell. That last look of his, from the doorway that had been the look of a man who

She got up and stood by the window. What had they done to him? What would they do? She looked at her

watch. It was four o'clock in the morning over there. The little house would be quiet now, but down along the

lines men would be standing on the firing step of the trench, and waiting, against what the dawn might bring.

Through the thin wall came the sound of Harvey's heavy, regular breathing. She remembered Henri's light

sleeping on the kitchen floor, his cap on the table, his cape rolled round him a sleeping, for all his

weariness, so light that he seemed always half conscious. She remembered the innumerable times he had

come in at this hour, muddy, sometimes rather gray of face with fatigue, but always cheerful.

It was just such an hour that she found him giving hot coffee to the German prisoner. It had been but a little

earlier when he had taken her to the roof and had there shown her Rene, lying with his face up toward the sky

A hundred memories crowded Henri's love for the Belgian soldiers, and theirs for him; his humor; his

absurd riddles. There was the one he had asked Rene, the very day before the air attack. He had stood stiffly

"No, no! Use your head boy! This is very important. A mistake would be most serious.

"He must be dead, Rene," Henri had said gravely. "Entirely dead. As I said, it is well to know these things. A

His blue eyes had gleamed with fun, but his face had remained frowning. It was quite five minutes before she

Was he still living, this Henri of the love of life and courting of death? Could anything so living die? And if

he had died had it been because of her? She faced that squarely for the first time.

"Perhaps even beyond the stars they have need of a little house of mercy; and, God knows, wherever I am I

Harvey was clamoring for an early wedding. And indeed there were few arguments against it, save one that

Sara Lee buried in her heart. Belle's house was small, and though she was welcome there, and more than that,

Perhaps Sara Lee would have agreed in the end. There seemed to be nothing else to do, though by the end of

the first week she was no longer in any doubt as to what her feeling for Harvey really was. It was kindness,

affection; but it was not love. She would marry him because she had promised to, and because their small

For to her surprise she found that that was what he had felt a strange, selfconscious shame, like that of a

man who has been jilted. She felt that by coming back to him she had forfeited the right to break the

So every hour of every day seemed to make the thing more inevitable. Belle was embroidering towels for her

in her scant leisure. Even Anna, with a second child coming, sent in her contribution to the bride's linen chest.

By almost desperately insisting on a visit to Aunt Harriet she got a reprieve of a month. And Harvey was

Sometimes, but mostly at night when she was alone, a hot wave of resentment overwhelmed her. Why should

she be forced into the thing? Was there any prospect of happiness after marriage when there was so little

For she realized now that even Harvey was not happy. He had at last definitely refused to hear the story of the

But inconsistently he knew she did not forget it, and it angered him. True to his insistence on ignoring those

months of her absence, she made no attempt to tell him. Now and then, however, closed in the library

together, they would fail of things to talk about, and Sara Lee's knitting needles would be the only sound in

the room. At those times he would sit back in his chair and watch the faraway look in her eyes, and it

>From her busy life Belle studied them both, with an understanding she did not reveal. And one morning

when the mail came she saw Sara Lee's face as she turned away, finding there was no letter for her, and made

The girl was standing by the window looking out. The children were playing below, and the maple trees were

"Exactly," said Belle dryly. "But that's hardly a good reason, is it? It takes more than a promise." She stared

down at the flock of children in the yard below. "Harvey's a man," she said. "He doesn't understand, but I do.

You've got to care a whole lot, Sara Lee, if you're going to go through with it. It takes a lot of love, when it

"If only I could have a little time," she cried wildly. "I'm so I'm tired, Belle. And I can't forget about the war

and all that. I've tried. Sometimes I think if we could talk it over together I'd get it out of my mind."

"He's my own brother, and I love him dearly. But sometimes I think he's hard. Not that he's ever ugly," she

hastened to add; "but he's stubborn. There's a sort of wall in him, and he puts some things behind it. And it's

"We've got him to think of too. He has a right to be happy. Sometimes I've looked at you you're so pretty,

Sara Lee and I've wondered if there wasn't some one over there who cared for you."

"Why not!" asked Belle practically. "You ought to talk it out to some one, and if Harvey insists on being a

For all the remainder of that sunny morning Sara Lee talked what was in her heart. And Belle poor,

romantic, starved Belle heard and thrilled. She made buttonholes as she listened, but once or twice a new

tone in Sara Lee's voice caused her to look up. Here was a new Sara Lee, a creature of vibrant voice and

glowing eyes; and Belle was not stupid. She saw that it was Henri whose name brought the deeper note.

Sara Lee had stopped with her recall, had stopped and looked about the room with its shiny new furniture and

"How can I? There is Harvey. And the society would not send me again. It's over, Belle. All over."

Her voice was flat and lifeless. Belle knew all that she wanted to know. She rose and gathered up her sewing.

"I'm going to talk to Harvey. You're not going to be rushed into a wedding. You're tired, and it's all nonsense.

That night Harvey and Belle had almost a violent scene. He had taken Sara Lee over the Leete house that

evening. Will Leete's widow had met them there, a small sad figure in her mourning, but very composed,

until she opened the door into a tiny room upstairs with a desk and a lamp in it.

"This was Will's study," she said. "He did his work here in the evenings, and I sat in that little chair and

"Pretty rotten of Will Leete to leave that little thing alone," said Harvey on their way home. "He had his fling;

But Sara Lee was silent. It was useless to try to make Harvey understand the urge that had called Will Leete

across the sea to do his share for the war, and that had brought him that peace of God that passeth all

It was not a good time for Belle to put up to him her suggestion for a delay in the marriage, that evening after

"I have already told you, Harvey," Belle put in. "It is my own idea. She is tired. She's been through a lot. I've

heard the story you're too stubborn to listen to. And I strongly advise her to wait a while."

And after a time he agreed ungraciously. He would buy the house and ftx it over, and in the early fall it would

"Unless," he added to Sara Lee with a bitterness born of disappointment " unless you change your mind

He did not kiss her that night when she and Belle went together up the stairs. But he stared after her gloomily,

He did not understand. He never would. She had come home to him all gentleness and tenderness, ready to

find in him the things she needed so badly. But out of his obstinacy and hurt he had himself built up a barrier.

That night Sara Lee dreamed that she was back in the little house of mercy. Rene was there; and Henri; and

Jean, with the patch over his eye. They were waiting for the men to come, and the narrow hall was full of the

odor of Marie's soup. Then she heard them coming, the shuffling of many feet on the road. She went to the

door, with Henri beside her, and watched them coming up the road, a deeper shadow in the blackness tired

men, wounded men, homeless men coming to her little house with its firelight and its warmth. Here and there

the match that lighted a cigarette showed a white but smiling face. They stopped before the door, and the

warm little house, with its guarded lights and its food and cheer, took them in.

Very pale and desperate Henri took the night A train for Folkestone after he had said goodby to Sara Lee.

He alternately chilled and burned with fever, and when he slept, as he did now and then, going off suddenly

He thought, in his wilder intervals, of killing himself. But his code did not include such a shirker's refuge. He

He had cabled to Jean to meet him at Calais, but when, at dawn the next morning, the channel boat drew in to

the wharf there was no sign of Jean or the car. Henri regarded the empty quay with apathetic eyes. They

would come, later on. If he could only get his head down and sleep for a while he would be better able to get

toward the Front. For he knew now that he was ill. He had, indeed, been ill for days, but he did not realize

that. And he hated illness. He regarded it with suspicion, as a weakness not for a strong man.

The drowsy girl in her chair at the Gare Maritime regarded him curiously and with interest. Many women

turned to look after Henri, but he did not know this. Had he known it he would have regarded it much as he

The stupid boy was not round. The girl herself took the key and led the way down the long corridor upstairs

to a room. Henri stumbled in and fell across the bed. He was almost immediately asleep.

Late in the afternoon he wakened. Strange that Jean had not come. He got up and bathed his face. His right

arm was very stiff now, and pains ran from the old wound in his chest down to the fingers of his hand. He

At six o'clock, when Jean had not come, Henri resorted to ways that he knew of and secured a car. He had

had some coffee by that time, and he felt much better so well indeed that he sang under his breath a strange

rambling song that sounded rather like Rene's rendering of Tipperary. The driver looked at him curiously

It was ten o'clock when they reached La Panne. Henri went at once to the villa set high on a sand dune where

the King's secretary lived. The house was dark, but in the library at the rear there was a light. He stumbled

along the paths beside the house, and reached at last, after interminable miles, when the path sometimes came

up almost to his eyes and again fell away so that it seemed to drop from under his feet at last he reached the

long French doors, with their drawn curtains. He opened the door suddenly and thereby surprised the

secretary, who was a most dignified and rather nervous gentleman, into laying his hand on a heavy inkwell.

"I wish to see the King," said Henri in a loud tone. Because at that moment the secretary, lamp and inkwell

and all, retired suddenly to a very great distance, as if one had viewed them through the reverse end of an

To tell the truth, the secretary rather thought so too. There was a strange rumor going round, to the effect that

the boy had followed a woman to England at a critical time. Which would have been a pity, the secretary

The secretary considerd gravely. Henri was by that time in a chair, but it moved about so that he had to hold

very tight to the arms. When he looked up again the secretary had picked up his soft black hat and was at the

"I shall inquire," he said. Henri saluted him stiffly, with his left hand, as he went out.

The secretary went to His Majesty's equerry, who was in the next house playing solitaire and trying to forget

So it was that in due time Henri again traversed miles of path and pavement, between tall borders of wild sea

grass, miles which perhaps were a hundred yards. And went round the screen, and found the King on the

hearthrug. But when he drew himself stiffly to attention he overdid the thing rather and went over backward

He was up again almost immediately, very flushed and uncomfortable. After that he kept himself in hand, but

the King, who had a way all his own of forgetting his divine right to rule, and a great many other things the

Henri sat in a chair and made a clean breast of it. Because he was feeling rather strange he told a great many

things that an agent of the secret service is hardly expected to reveal to his king. He mentioned, for instance,

the color of Sara Lee's eyes, and the way she bandaged, like one who had been trained.

Once, in the very middle of his narrative, where he had put the letter from the Front in his pocket and decided

to go to England anyhow, he stopped and hummed Rene's version of Tipperary. Only a bar or two. Then he

Only he did not call him Jean. He gave him his other name, which, like Henri's, is not to be told.

Henri's brain cleared then with the news that Jean was missing. When, somewhat later, he staggered out of

the villa, it was under royal instructions to report to the great hospital along the sea front and near by, and

there to go to bed and have a doctor. Indeed, because the boy's eyes were wild by that time, the equerry went

along and held his arm. But that was because Henri was in open revolt, and while walking steadily enough

He would stop on the way and argue, though one does not argue easily with an equerry.

"I must go," he would say fretfully. "God knows where he is. He'd never give me up if I were the one."

An English nurse took charge of Henri in the hospital, and put him to bed. He was very polite to her, and

extremely cynical. She sat in a chair by his bed and held the key of the room in her hand. Once he thought she

was Sara Lee, but that was only for a moment. She did not look like Sara Lee. And she was suspicious, too;

for when he asked her what she could put in her left hand that she could not put in her right, she moved away

However, toward morning she dozed. There was steady firing at Nieuport and the windows shook constantly.

An ambulance came in, followed by a stirring on the lower floor. Then silence. He got up then and secured

the key. There was no time for dressing, because she was a Suspicious person and likely to waken at any

time. He rolled his clothing into a bundle and carried it under his well arm. The other was almost useless.

The ambulance was still waiting outside, at the foot of the staircase. There were voices and lights in the

operating room, forward along the tiled hall. Still in his night clothing, Henri got into the ambulance and

Outside the village he paused long enough to dress. His head was amazingly clear. He had never felt so sure

of himself before. As to his errand he had no doubt whatever. Jean had learned that he had crossed the

channel. Therefore Jean had taken up his work Jean, who had but one eye and was as clumsy as a bear. The

thought of Jean crawling through the German trenches set him laughing until he ended with a sob.

It was rather odd about the ambulance. It did not keep the road very well. Sometimes it was on one side and

sometimes on the other. It slid as though the road were greased. And after a time Henri made an amazing

He looked back, without stopping, and the machine went off in a wide arc. He brought it back again,

"Thought you had me, didn't you?" he observed to the car in general, and the engine in particular. "Now no

There was a wounded man in the car. He had had morphia and he was very comfortable. He was not badly

hurt, and he considered that he was being taken to Calais. He was too tired to talk, and the swinging of the car

rather interested him. He would doze and waken and doze again. But at last he heard something that made

They had reached the village now where was the little house of mercy. The ambulance rolled and leaped

down the street, with both lights full on, which was forbidden, and came to a stop at the door. The man inside

was grunting then, and Henri, whose head had never been so clear, got out and went round to the rear of the

"Now, out with you, comrade!" he said. "I have made an error, but it is immaterial. Can you walk?"

He lighted a cigarette, and the man inside saw his burning eyes and shaking hands. Even through the apathy

of the morphia he felt a thrill of terror. He could walk. He got out while Henri pounded at the door.

When he heard steps inside Henri went back to the ambulance. He got in and drove it, lights and all, down the

Somewhere down the road beyond the poplar trees he abandoned the ambulance. They found it there the next

morning, or rather what was left of it. Evidently its two unwinking eyes had got on the Germans' nerves.

Early the next morning a Saxon regiment, standing on the firing step ready for what the dawn might bring

forth, watched the mist rise from the water in front of them. It shone on a body in a Belgian uniform, lying

Now the Saxons are not Prussians, so no one for sport fired at the body. Which was rather a good thing,

because it moved slightly and stirred. And then in a loud voice, which is an unusual thing for bodies to

Late in August Sara Lee broke her engagement with Harvey. She had been away, at Cousin Jennie's, for a

month, and for the first time since her return she had had time to think. In the little suburban town there were

long hours of quiet when Cousin Jennie mended on the porch and Aunt Harriet, enjoying a sort of reflected

Sara Lee decided to send for Harvey, and he came for a weekend, arriving pathetically eager, but with a sort

of defiance too. He was determined to hold her, but to hold her on his own terms.

Aunt Harriet had been vaguely uneasy, but Harvey's arrival seemed to put everything right. She even kissed

him when he came, and took great pains to carry off Cousin Jennie when she showed an inclination toward

Sara Lee had made a desperate resolve. She intended to lay all her cards on the table. He should know all that

there was to know. If, after that, he still wanted to hold her but she did not go so far. She was so sure he

It was a despairing thing to do, but she was rather despairing those days. There had been no letter from Henri

or from Jean. She had written them both several times, to Dunkirk, to the Savoy in London, to the little house

near the Front. But no replies had come. Yet mail was going through. Mabel Andrews' letters from Boulogne

When August went by, with no letters save Harvey's, begging her to come back, she gave up at last. In the

little church on Sundays, with Jennie on one side ard Aunt Harriet on the other, she voiced small silent

prayers that the thing she feared had not happened. But she could not think of Henri as not living. He was

She did not understand herself those days. She was desperately unhappy. Sometimes she wondered if it

would not be easier to know the truth, even if that truth comprehended the worst.

Once she received, from some unknown hand, a French journal, and pored over it for days with her French

dictionary, to find if it contained any news. It was not until a week later that she received a letter from Mabel,

explaining that she had sent the journal, which contained a description of her hospital.

All of Harvey's Sunday she spent in trying to bring her courage to the point of breaking the silence he had

imposed on her, but it was not until evening that she succeeded. The house was empty. The family had gone

to church. On the veranda, with the heavy scent of phlox at night permeating the still air, Sara Lee made her

confession. She began at the beginning. Harvey did not stir until she told of the way she had stowed away

"He took me to Dunkirk in his car. Such a hideons car, Harvey all wrecked. It had been under fire again and

"I like his nerve! Wasn't there in all that Godforsaken country a woman to take with you? You and this

"Look here!" he burst out. "How much of this aren't you going to tell? Because I want it all or not at all."

"I can't tell you his name. I'm only trying to make you urderstand the way I feel about things. His name

doesn't matter." She clenched her hands in the dark ness. I don't think he is alive now.

"Why should you hear from him?" His voice cut like a knife. "Look at me. Why should he write to you?"

"Don't he angry, please," she begged "I couldn't bear it. It wasn't my fault, or his either."

"Don't say that," she said. "Don't! I won't allow you to. When I think what may have happened to him, I "

"Go on," Harvey said in cold tones she had never heard before. "Tell it all, now you've begun it. God knows I

didn't want to hear it. He took you to the hotel at Dunkirk, the way those foreigners take their women. And he

"You needn't go on," she said quietly. "I had a decision to make tonight, and I have made it. Ever since I

came home I have been trying to go back to where we were before I left. It isn't possible. You are what you

"It isn't that you don't love me. I think you do. But I've been thinking things over. It isn't only tonight, or

what you just said. It's because we don't care for the same things, or believe in them."

"It's not that, either. I used to feel that way. A home, and some one to care about, and a little pleasure and

He was terrified. His anger was gone. He placed an appealing hand on her arm, and as she stood there in the

faint starlight the wonder of her once again got him by the throat. She had that sort of repressed eagerness,

that look of being poised for flight, that had always made him feel cheap and unworthy.

"Not now," she said, her eyes turned toward the east. "These are great days, Harvey. They are greater and

more terrible than any one can know who has not been there. I've been there and I know. I haven't the right to

Down the quiet street of the little town service was over. The last hymn had been sung. Through the open

windows came the mellow sound of the minister's voice in benediction, too far away to be more than a tone,

like a single deep note of the organ. Sara Lee listened. She knew the words he was saying, and she listened

"The peace of God that passeth all understanding be and abide with you all, forevermore. Amen."

Sara Lee listened, and from the step below her Harvey watched her with furtive, haggard eyes. He had not

"The peace of God!" she said slowly. "There is only one peace of God, Harvey, and that is service. I am

"I'm afraid he is not there any more. I am going back to work. But if he is there "

Harvey slid the ring into his pocket. "What if he's not there," he demanded bitterly. "If you think, after all

this, that I'm going to wait, on the chance of your coming back to me, you're mistaken. I've been a laughing

In the light of her new decision Sara Lee viewed him for the first time with the pitiless eyes of women who

have lost a faith. She saw him for what he was, not deliberately cruel, not even unkindly, but selfish, small,

without vision. Harvey was for his own fireside, his office, his little family group. His labor would always be

for himself and his own. Whereas Sara Lee was, now and forever, for all the world, her hands consecrated to

bind up its little wounds and to soothe its great ones. Harvey craved a cheap and easy peace. She wanted no

peace except that bought by service, the peace of a tired body, the peace of the little house in Belgium where,

after days of torture, weary men found quiet and ease and the cheer of the open door.

Late in October Sara Lee went back to the little house of mercy; went unaccredited, and with her own money.

In London she went to the Traverses, as before. But with a difference too. For Sara Lee had learned the

strangeness of the English, who are slow to friendships but who never forget. Indeed a telegram met her at

Liverpool asking her to stop with them in London. She replied, refusing, but thanking them, and saying she

Everything was the same at Morley's: Rather a larger percentage of men in uniform, perhaps; greater crow(ls

in the square; a little less of the optimism which in the spring had predicted victory before autumn. But the

August greeted her like an old friend. Even the waiters bowed to her, and upstairs the elderly chambermaid

But her keen eyes saw a change in Sara Lee. Her smile was the same, but there were times when she forgot to

finish a sentence, and she stood, that first morning, for an hour by the window, looking out as if she saw

She went, before the visit to the Traverses, to the Church of Saint Martin in the Fields. It was empty, save for

a woman in a corner, who did not kneel, but sat staring quietly before her. Sara Lee prayed an inarticulate bit

of a prayer, that what the Traverses would have to tell her should not be the thing that she feared, but that, if

The Traverses would know; Mrs. Cameron was a friend. They would know about Henri, and about Jean.

Soon, within the hour, she would learn everything. So she asked for strength, and then sat there for a time,

letting the peace of the old church quiet her, as had the broken walls and shattered altar of that other church,

It was rather a surprise to Sara Lee to have Mrs. Travers put her arms about her and kiss her. Mr. Travers,

too, patted her hand when he took it. But they had, for all that, the reserve of their class. Much that they felt

"We are so grateful to you," Mrs. Travers said. "I am only one mother, and of course now " She looked

down at her black dress. "But how many others there are who will want to thank you, when this terrible thing

"Frequently. She has worked hard, but she is not young." It was Mrs. Travers who spoke. "She's afraid of the

winter there. I rather think, since you want to go back, that she will be glad to turn your domain over to you

"Indeed, yes! A very famous little house, indeed. But it is always known as your house. She has felt like a

Tea had come, as before. The momentary stir gave her a chance to brace herself. Mr. Travers brought her cup

"We have a plan to talk over," he said, "when you have had your tea. I hope you will agree to it."

"When I was there before," Sara Lee said, trying to hold her cup steady, "there was a young Belgian officer

who was very kind to me. Indeed, all the credit for what I did belongs to him. And since I went home I

Her voice broke suddenly. Mr. Travers glanced at his wife. Not for nothing had Mrs. Cameron written her

long letters to these old friends, in the quiet summer afternoons when the sun shone down on the lifeless

"I'm afraid we have bad news for you." Mrs. Travers put down her untasted tea. "Or rather, we have no news.

Of course," she added, seeing Sara Lee's eyes, "in this war no news may be the best that is, he may be a

"That," Sara Lee heard herself say, "is impossible. If they captured him they would shoot him."

Mrs. Travers nodded silently. They knew Henri's business, too, by that time, and that there was no hope for a

They did not know of Jean; so she told them, still in that faraway voice. And at last Mrs. Travers brought an

"He seems to have been delirious," she read, holding her reading glasses to her eyes. "A friend of his, very

"He escaped from the hospital and got away in an ambulance. He came straight here and wakened us. There

had been a wounded man in the machine, and he left him on our doorstep. When I got to the door the car was

going wildly toward the Front, with both lamps lighted. We did not understand then, of course, and no one

thought of following it. The ambulance was found smashed by a shell the next morning, and at first we

thought that he had been in it. But there was no sign that he had been, and that night one of the men from the

trenches insisted that he had climbed out of a firing trench where the soldier stood, and had gone forward,

"I am afraid it was the end. The men, however, who all loved him, do not think so. It seems that he has done

miracles again and again. I understand that along the whole Belgian line they watch for him at night. The

other night a German on reconnoissance got very close to our wire, and was greeted not by shots but by a

wild hurrah. He was almost paralyzed with surprise. They brought him here on the way back to the prison

Sara Lee sat with her hands clenched. Mrs. Travers folded the letter and put it back into its envelope.

"How long ago was that?" Sara Lee asked in a low tone. "Because, if he was coming back at all "

I think I ought to tell you," she said with a deadwhite face, "that I am responsible. He cared for me; and I

was in love with him too. Only I didn't know it then. I let him bring me to England, because I suppose it

was because I loved him. I didn't think then that it was that. I was engaged to a man at home."

The Traverses looked at each other. They were English. They had taken their own great loss quietly, because

it was an individual grief and must not be intruded on the sorrow of a nation. But they found this whitefaced

girl infinitely appealing, a small and fragile figure, to whose grief must be added, without any fault of hers, a

"Please don't worry about me," she said. "I need something to do, that's all. You see, I've been worrying for

so long. If I can get to work and try to make up I'll not be so hopeless. But I am not quite hopeless, either,"

she added hastily. It was as though by the very word she had consigned Henri to death. "You see, I am like

the men; I won't give him up. And perhaps some night he will come across from the other side, out of the

Mr. Travers took her back to the hotel. When he returned from paying off the taxi he found her looking

"Do you remember," she asked him, "the time when the little donkey was hurt over there?"

So again the lights went down in front, and the back drop became but a veil, and invisible. And to Sara Lee

there came back again some of the characters of the early mise en scene marching men, forage wagons,

squadrons of French cavalry escorting various staffs, commandeered farm horses with shaggy fetlocks

fastened in rope corrals, artillery rumbling along rutted roads which shook the gunners almost off the limbers.

Nothing was changed and everything. There was no Rene to smile his adoring smile, but Marie came out,

sobbing and laughing, and threw herself into the girl's arms. The little house was the same, save for a hole in

the kitchen wall. There were the great piles of white bowls and the shining kettles. There was the corner of

her room, patched by Rene's hands, now so long quiet. A few more shell holes in the street, many more little

crosses in the field near the poplar trees, more Allied aeroplanes in the air that was ail that was changed.

But to Sara Lee everything was changed, for all that. The little house was grave and still, like a house of the

dead. Once it had echoed to young laughter, had resounded to the noise and excitement of Henri's every

entrance. Even when he was not there it was as though it but waited for him to stir it into life, and small

Sara Lee stood on the doorstep and looked within. She had come back. Here she would work and wait, and if

in the goodness of providence he should come back, here he would find her, all the empty months gone and

forgotten. If he did not "I shall still be calling you, and waiting," be had written. She, too, would call and

wait, and if not here, then surely in the fullness of time which is eternity the call would be answered.

In October Sara Lee took charge again of the little house. Mrs. Cameron went back to England, but not until

the Traverses' plan had been revealed. They would support the little house, as a memorial to the son who had

died. It was, Mrs. Travers wrote, the finest tribute they could offer to his memory, that night after night tired

and ill and wounded men might find sanctuary, even for a little time, under her care.

Luxuries began to come across the channel, food and dressings and tobacco. Knitted things, too; for another

winter was coming, and already the frost lay white on the fields in the mornings. The little house took on a

new air of prosperity. There were days when it seemed almost swaggering with opulence.

It had need of everything, however. With the prospect of a second winter, when an advance was impossible,

the Germans took to hammering again. Bombardment was incessant. The little village was again under

suspicion, and there came days of terror when it seemed as though even the fallen masonry must be reduced

By December Sara Lee had ceased to take refuge during the bombardments. The fatalism of the Front had got

her. She would die or live according to the great plan, and nothing could change that. She did not greatly care

which, except for her work, and even that she felt could be carried on by another as well.

There was no news of Henri, but once the King's equerry, going by, had stopped to see her and had told her

"He was ill, undoubtedly," he said. "Even when he went to London he was ill, and not responsible. The King

But the last element of hope seemed to go with that verification of his illness. He was delirious, and he had

gone in that condition into the filthy chill waters of the inundation. Well and sane there had been a chance,

She did her best in the evenings to be cheerful, to take the place, in her small and serious fashion, of Henri's

old gayety. But the soldiers whispered among themselves that mademoiselle was in grief, as they were, for

What hope Sara Lee had had died almost entirely early in December. On the evening of a day when a steady

rain had turned the roads into slimy pitfalls, and the ditches to canals, there came, brought by a Belgian

corporal, the man who swore that Henri had passed him in his trench while the others slept, had shoved him

To Sara Lee this Hutin told his story. A short man with a red beard and a kindly smile that revealed teeth

"It was the captain, mademoiselle," he asserted. "I knnw hm well. He has often gone on his errands from near

"He had no cap, mademoiselle. I thought that was odd, And as you know he does not near his own uniform

on such occasions. But he wore his own uniform, so that at first I did not know what he intended."

"How else could he go? Through the wire first, at the barrier, where there is an opening, if one knows the

way, I aw him beyond it, by the light of a fusee. There is a road there, or what was once a road. He stood

On a wild night in January Sara Lee inaugurated a new branch of service. There had been a delay in sending

up to the Front the men who bad been on rest, and an incessant bombardment held the troops prisoners in

A field kitchen had been destroyed. The men were hungry, disheartened, wet through. They needed her, she

felt. Even the little she could do would help. All day she had made soup, and at evening Marie led from its

dilapidated stable the little horse that Henri had once brought up, trundling its cart behind it. The boiler of the

cart was scoured, a fire lighted in the fire box. Marie, a country girl, harnessed the shaggy little animal, but

"But I haxe gone before. Don't you remember the man whose wife was English, and how I wrote a letter for

"Dear Marie," said Sara Lee, "that is all arranged for. You will send to Poperinghe for your aunt, and she will

come until Mrs. Cameron or some one else can come from England. And you will stay on. Will you promise

"Of course I shall come back," Sara Lee said, stirring her soup preparatory to pouring it out. "I shall be very

"Those are the ones who live on," said Sara Lee gravely, and poured out her soup.

She went quite alone. There was a great deal of noise, but no shells fell near her. She led the little horse by its

head, and its presence gave her comfort. It had a sense that she had not, too, for it kept her on the road.

In those still early days the Belgian trenches were quite accessible from the rear. There were no long tunneled

ways to traverse to reach them. One went along through the darkness until the sound of men's voices, the

glare of charcoal in a bucket bored with holes, the flicker of a match, told of the buried army almost

"It is I," she called through the rain. "I have brought some chocolate and some soup."

Through the nearby trenches that night went the word that near the Repose of the Angels which was but a

hole in the ground and scarcely reposeful there was to be had hot soup and chocolate and cigarettes. A

dozen or so at a time, the men were allowed to come. Officers brought their great capes to keep the girl dry.

Boards appeared as if by magic for her to stand on. The rain and the bombardment had both ceased, and a full

When the last soup had been dipped from the tall boiler, when the final drops of chocolate had oozed from

the faucet, Sara Lee turned and went back to the little house again. But before she went she stood a moment

staring across toward that land of the shadow on the other side, where Henri had gone and had not returned.

Once, when the King had decorated her, she had wished that, wherever Uncle James might be, on the other

side, he could see what was happening. And now she wondered if Henri could know that she had come back,

and was again looking after his men while she waited for that reunion he had so firmly believed in.

At the poplar trees she turned and looked behind, toward the trenches. The grove was but a skeleton now, a

strange and jagged thing of twisted branches, as though it had died in agony. She stood there while the pony

nuzzled her gently. If she called, would he come? But, then, all of life was one call now, for her. She went on

After that it was not unusual for her to go to the trenches, on such nights as no men could come to the little

house. Always she was joyously welcomed, and always on her way back she turned to send from the poplar

January, wet and raw, went by; February, colder, with snow, was half over. The men had ceased to watch for

Henri over the parapet, and his brave deeds had become fireside tales, to be told at home, if ever there were to

Then one night Henri came back came as he had gone, out of the shadows that had swallowed him up;

came without so much as the sound of a sniper's rifle to herald him. A strange, thin Henri, close to starvation,

dripping water over everything from a German uniform, and very close indeed to death before he called out.

There was wild excitement indeed. Bearded private soldiers, forgetting that name and rank of his which must

not be told, patted his thin shoulders. Officers who had lived through such horrors as also may not be told,

It was as though from the graveyard back in the fields had come, alive and smiling, some dearly beloved

"That can wait," they said, and led him, a motley band of officers and men intermixed, for once forgetting all

decorum, toward the village. They overtook the lines of men who had left the trenches and were moving with

their slow and weary gait up the road. The news spread through the column. There were muffled cheers.

Figures stepped out of the darkness with hands out. Henri clasped as many as he could.

When with his escort he had passed the men they fell, almost without orders, into columns of four, and swung

in behind him. There was no band, but from a thousand throats, yet cautiously until they passed the poplar

Behind Henri a strange guard of honor muddy, tired, torn, even wounded they marched and sang:

Sara Lee, listening for that first shuffle of many feet that sounded so like the wind in the trees or water over

the pebbles of a brook, paused in her work and lifted her head. The rhythm of marching feet came through the

wooden shutters. The very building seemed to vibrate with it. And there was a growling sound with it that

She went to the door and stood there, looking down the street. Behind her was the warm glow of the lamp, all

A group of soldiers had paused in front of the doorway, and from them one emerged tall, white, infinitely

After all, there are no words for such meetings. Henri took her hand, still with that sense of unreality, and

bent over it. And Sara Lee touched his head as he stooped, because she had called for so long, and only now

"So you have come back!" she said in what she hoped was a composed tone because a great many people

There was gayety in the little house that night. Every candle was lighted. They were stuck in rows on

mantelshelves. They blazed and melted into strange arcs above the kitchen stove. There were cigarettes

for everybody, and food; and a dry uniform, rather small, for Henri. Marie wept over her soup, and ran every

few moments to the door to see if he was still there. She had kissed him on both cheeks when he came in, and

Sara Lee did her bandaging as usual, but with shining eyes. And soon after Henri's arrival a dispatch rider set

off post haste with certain papers and maps, hurriedly written and drawn. Henri had not only returned, he had

So Sara Lee bandaged, and in the little room across the way, where no longer Harvey's photograph sat on the

mantel, Henri told his story to the officers of his imprisonment in the German prison at Crefeld; of his

finding Jean there, weeks later when he was convalescing from typhoid; of their escape and long wandering;

of Jean's getting into Holland, whence he would return by way of England. Of his own business, of what he

had done behind the lines after Jean had gone, he said nothing. But his listeners knew and understood.

But his dispatches off, his story briefly told, Henri wandered out among the men again. He was very happy.

He had never thought to be so happy. He felt the touch on his sleeves of hard brown, not overclean hands,

infinitely tender and caressing; and over there, as though she had never gone, was Sara Lee, slightly flushed

And as though he also had never gone away, Henri pushed into the salle a manger and stood before her

"You bandage well, mademoiselle," he said gayly. "But I? I bandage better! See now, a turn here, and it is

"Then I shall ask you a question, and you will forget the iodine. Why is a dead German like the tail of a pig?"

"Because it is the end of the swine," explained Henri, and looked about him triumphantly. A gust of laughter

spread through the room and even to the kitchen. A door banged. Henri upset a chair. There was noise again,

And there I think we may leave them all Henri and Sara Lee; and Jean of the one eye and the faithful heart;

and Marie, with her kettles; and even Rene, who still in some strange way belonged to the little house, as

The amazing interlude had become the play itself. Never again for Sara Lee would the lights go up in front,

The drama of the war plays on. The Great Playwright sees fit, now and then, to take away some wellbeloved

players. New faces appear and disappear. The music is the thunder of many guns. Henri still plays his big

part, Sara Lee her little one. Yet who shall say, in the end, which one has done the better? There are new and

ever new standards, but love remains the chief. And love is Sara Lee's one quality love of her kind, of tired

men and weary, the love that shall one day knit this broken world together. And love of one man.

On weary nights, when Henri is again lost in the shadows, Sara Lee, her work done, the men gone, sits in her

little house of mercy and waits. The stars on clear evenings shine down on the roofless buildings, on the

rubbish that was once the mill, on the ruined poplar trees, and on the small acre of peace where tiny crosses

And sometimes, though she knows it now by heart, she reads aloud that letter of Henri's to her. It comforts

"If that is to be, then think of me, somewhere, perhaps with Rene by my side, since he, too, loved you. And I

shall still be calling you, and waiting. Perhaps, even beyond the stars, they have need of a little house of