So it was that in due time Henri again traversed miles of path and pavement, between tall borders of wild sea grass, miles which perhaps were a hundred yards.  And went round the screen, and—­found the King on the hearthrug.  But when he drew himself stiffly to attention he overdid the thing rather and went over backward with a crash.

He was up again almost immediately, very flushed and uncomfortable.  After that he kept himself in hand, but the King, who had a way all his own of forgetting his divine right to rule, and a great many other things—­the King watched him gravely.

Henri sat in a chair and made a clean breast of it.  Because he was feeling rather strange he told a great many things that an agent of the secret service is hardly expected to reveal to his king.  He mentioned, for instance, the color of Sara Lee’s eyes, and the way she bandaged, like one who had been trained.

Once, in the very middle of his narrative, where he had put the letter from the Front in his pocket and decided to go to England anyhow, he stopped and hummed Rene’s version of Tipperary.  Only a bar or two.  Then he remembered.

But one thing brought him round with a start.

“Then,” said the King slowly, “Jean was not with you?”

Only he did not call him Jean.  He gave him his other name, which, like Henri’s, is not to be told.

Henri’s brain cleared then with the news that Jean was missing.  When, somewhat later, he staggered out of the villa, it was under royal instructions to report to the great hospital along the sea front and near by, and there to go to bed and have a doctor.  Indeed, because the boy’s eyes were wild by that time, the equerry went along and held his arm.  But that was because Henri was in open revolt, and while walking steadily enough showed a tendency to bolt every now and then.

He would stop on the way and argue, though one does not argue easily with an equerry.

“I must go,” he would say fretfully.  “God knows where he is.  He’d never give me up if I were the one.”

And once he shook off the equerry violently and said: 

“Let go of me, I tell you!  I’ll come back and go to bed when I’ve found him.”

The equerry soothed him like a child.

An English nurse took charge of Henri in the hospital, and put him to bed.  He was very polite to her, and extremely cynical.  She sat in a chair by his bed and held the key of the room in her hand.  Once he thought she was Sara Lee, but that was only for a moment.  She did not look like Sara Lee.  And she was suspicious, too; for when he asked her what she could put in her left hand that she could not put in her right, she moved away and placed the door key on the stand, out of reach.

However, toward morning she dozed.  There was steady firing at Nieuport and the windows shook constantly.  An ambulance came in, followed by a stirring on the lower floor.  Then silence.  He got up then and secured the key.  There was no time for dressing, because she was a suspicious person and likely to waken at any time.  He rolled his clothing into a bundle and carried it under his well arm.  The other was almost useless.