And she recalled his final words, his arms so close about her that she
could hardly breathe, his voice husky with emotion.
"Just let me hear of any of those foreigners bothering you," he said,
"and I'll go over and wipe out the whole damned nation."
It had not sounded funny then. It was not funny now.
"Please come," said Sara Lee in a small voice.
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 for many women's eyes. He, however, saw no one but Sara Lee.
Henri, too, called a taxicab. Every one in London seemed to ride in
taxis. And he bent over her hand, once she was in the car, but he did
not kiss it.
"It is very kind of you, what you are doing," he said. "But, then, you
Americans are all kind. And wonderful."
Back at Morley's Hotel Sara Lee had a short conversation with Harvey's
picture.
"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 very, very respectful. And he is coming on business."
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 it would put things on the
right footing.
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 clothes.
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 and young affair in which Sara Lee looked like the heart of a rose.