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 of them--are

death blows to young love.

The winter floods were receding. Along the Yser Canal mud-caked 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 spring drive was coming.

There was spring indeed, everywhere but in Henri's heart.

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 fishing village by the sea.

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 semi-armistice 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 with boxes, rolled and thumped

down the street, and halted by Rene.

"Rather think we are lost," explained the driver, grinning sheepishly

at Rene.

There were four boys in khaki on the truck, and not a word of French

among them. Sara Lee, who rolled her own bandages now, heard the

speech and came out.

"Good gracious!" she said, and gave an alarmed glance at the sky. But

it was the noon hour, when every good German abandons war for food, and

the sky was empty.




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