For the first time Sara Lee was realizing the full value of the thing she was throwing away.  She had persistently discounted it until now.  She had been grateful for it.  She had felt unworthy of it.  But now, on the edge of leaving it, she felt that something infinitely precious and very beautiful was going out of her life.  She had already a sense of loss.

For the first time, too, she was allowing herself to think of certain contingencies that were now forever impossible.  For instance, suppose she had stayed with Mrs. Cameron?  Suppose she had broken her promise to Harvey and remained at the little house?  Suppose she had done as Henri had so wildly urged her, and had broken entirely with Harvey?  Would she have married Henri?

There was a certain element of caution in the girl.  It made the chances she had taken rather more courageous, indeed, because she had always counted the cost.  But marriage was not a matter for taking chances.  One should know not only the man, but his setting, though she would not have thought of it in that way.  Not only the man, but the things that made up his life—­his people, his home.

And Henri was to her still a figure, not so much now of mystery as of detachment.  Except Jean he had no intimates.  He had no family on the only side of the line she knew.  He had not even a country.

She had reached that point when Henri came below and saluted her stiffly from the doorway.

“Henri!” she said.  “I believe you are ill!”

“I am not ill,” he said, and threw himself into the corner of the seat.  “You have read it?”

She nodded.  Even thinking of it brought a lump into her throat.  He bent forward, but he did not touch her.

“I meant it, Saralie,” he said.  “Sometimes men are infatuated, and write what they do not mean.  They are sincere at the time, and then later on—­ But I meant it.  I shall always mean it.”

Not then, nor during the three days in London, did he so much as take her hand.  He was not well.  He ate nothing, and at night he lay awake and drank a great deal of water.  Once or twice he found her looking at him anxiously, but he disclaimed all illness.

He had known from the beginning what he was doing.  But he did not touch her, because in his heart he knew that where once he had been worthy he was no longer worthy.  He had left his work for a woman.

It is true that he had expected to go back at once.  But the Philadelphia, which had been listed to sail the next day, was held up by a strike in Liverpool, and he waited on, taking such hours as she could give him, feverishly anxious to make her happy, buying her little gifts, mostly flowers, which she wore tucked in her belt and smiled over, because she had never before received flowers from a man.

He was alternately gay and silent.  They walked across the Thames by the Parliament buildings, and midway across he stopped and looked long at the stream.  And they went to the Zoological Gardens, where he gravely named one of the sea lions for Colonel Lilias because of its mustache, and insisted on saluting it each time before he flung it a fish.  Once he soberly gathered up a very new baby camel, all legs, in his arms, and presented it to her.