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 and cherish and love.

He went outside to her closed door.

"Good night, sweetheart," he called softly.

"Good night, dear," came her soft reply.

But long after he was asleep Sara Lee stood at her window and listened

to the leaves, so like the feet of weary men on the ruined street over

there.

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. Many kinds of love; and one

heart might love many people, in different ways.

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 Marie's, but a memory.

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

done.

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?

But that was one question she did not answer frankly.

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.




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024