Early the next morning a Saxon regiment, standing on the firing step ready for what the dawn might bring forth, watched the mist rise from the water in front of them.  It shone on a body in a Belgian uniform, lying across their wire, and very close indeed.

Now the Saxons are not Prussians, so no one for sport fired at the body.  Which was rather a good thing, because it moved slightly and stirred.  And then in a loud voice, which is an unusual thing for bodies to possess, it began to sing: 

        Trou la la, ce ne va guere;
        Trou la la, ca ne va pas.

XXVIII

Late in August Sara Lee broke her engagement with Harvey.  She had been away, at Cousin Jennie’s, for a month, and for the first time since her return she had had time to think.  In the little suburban town there were long hours of quiet when Cousin Jennie mended on the porch and Aunt Harriet, enjoying a sort of reflected glory from Sara Lee, presided at Red Cross meetings.

Sara Lee decided to send for Harvey, and he came for a week-end, arriving pathetically eager, but with a sort of defiance too.  He was determined to hold her, but to hold her on his own terms.

Aunt Harriet had been vaguely uneasy, but Harvey’s arrival seemed to put everything right.  She even kissed him when he came, and took great pains to carry off Cousin Jennie when she showed an inclination toward conversation and a seat on the porch.

Sara Lee had made a desperate resolve.  She intended to lay all her cards on the table.  He should know all that there was to know.  If, after that, he still wanted to hold her—­but she did not go so far.  She was so sure he would release her.

It was a despairing thing to do, but she was rather despairing those days.  There had been no letter from Henri or from Jean.  She had written them both several times, to Dunkirk, to the Savoy in London, to the little house near the Front.  But no replies had come.  Yet mail was going through.  Mabel Andrews’ letters from Boulogne came regularly.

When August went by, with no letters save Harvey’s, begging her to come back, she gave up at last.  In the little church on Sundays, with Jennie on one side and Aunt Harriet on the other, she voiced small silent prayers—­that the thing she feared had not happened.  But she could not think of Henri as not living.  He was too strong, too vital.

She did not understand herself those days.  She was desperately unhappy.  Sometimes she wondered if it would not be easier to know the truth, even if that truth comprehended the worst.

Once she received, from some unknown hand, a French journal, and pored over it for days with her French dictionary, to find if it contained any news.  It was not until a week later that she received a letter from Mabel, explaining that she had sent the journal, which contained a description of her hospital.