第41章

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 hung over the table in the salle a manger.

Whatever Jean's anxieties had been fell from him as he pushed open the door.Henri's voice was the first thing they heard.He was too much occupied to notice their approach.

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 were bound, and three soldiers were waiting to take them away.

"I have covered your heads," Henri was saying in French, "because it is not well that our brave Belgians should know that they have been betrayed by those of their own number."It was a cold and terrible Henri who spoke."Take them away," he said to the waiting men.

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 bitterness of the last hour, were lost in an overwhelming burst of tenderness.

He bent over her and put his arms round her.

"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," he whispered."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, sensitive to every gesture, stood back.

"Who are they?" was the first thing she said.It rather stabbed him.He had just told her that he loved her, and never before in his careless young life had he said that to any woman.

"Spies," he said briefly.

A flushed and tearful Sara Lee stood up then and looked up at him gravely.

"Then - that is what you do?" "Yes, mademoiselle."Quite suddenly she went to him and held up her face.

"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 death wound.

"You have paid me a great tribute," she said, still simply and gravely."I wanted you to kiss me, because of what you said.But that will have to be all, Henri dear.""All?" he said blankly.

"You haven't forgotten, have you? I - I am engaged to somebody else." Henri stood still, swaying a little.

"And you love him? More than you care for me?""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.

"Isn't that part of it?"

He flung out his hands as though he despaired of making her understand.

"This man at home -" he said bitterly; "this man who loves you so well that he let you cross the sea and come here alone - do you love him very dearly?""I am promised to him."

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 hadlooked 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.

"I love him very much, Henri."

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 heard the door slam.