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. But mostly he sat in the mill house and waited. He could

not read.

"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 being reminded by the touch of a

woman's hand of all that he had lost.

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

from the flood.

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 poplar trees.

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 and day the guns never rested.

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 ardor of his young arms--Henri, who had been to her many friends.

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 the same time. But women are less frank with

themselves.




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