All of Harvey’s Sunday she spent in trying to bring her courage to the point of breaking the silence he had imposed on her, but it was not until evening that she succeeded.  The house was empty.  The family had gone to church.  On the veranda, with the heavy scent of phlox at night permeating the still air, Sara Lee made her confession.  She began at the beginning.  Harvey did not stir—­until she told of the way she had stowed away to cross the channel.  Then he moved.

“This fellow who planned that for you—­did you ever see him again?”

“He met me in Calais.”

“And then what?”

“He took me to Dunkirk in his car.  Such a hideous car, Harvey—­all wrecked.  It had been under fire again and again.  I—­”

“He took you to Dunkirk!  Who was with you?”

“Just Jean, the chauffeur.”

“I like his nerve!  Wasn’t there in all that Godforsaken country a woman to take with you?  You and this—­What was his name, anyhow?”

“I can’t tell you that, Harvey.”

“Look here!” he burst out.  “How much of this aren’t you going to tell?  Because I want it all or not at all.”

“I can’t tell you his name.  I’m only trying to make you understand the way I feel about things.  His name doesn’t matter.”  She clenched her hands in the darkness.  “I don’t think he is alive now.”

He tried to see her face, but she turned it away.

“Dead, eh?  What makes you think that?”

“I haven’t heard from him.”

“Why should you hear from him?” His voice cut like a knife.  “Look at me.  Why should he write to you?”

“He cared for me, Harvey.”

He sat in a heavy silence which alarmed her.

“Don’t be angry, please,” she begged.  “I couldn’t bear it.  It wasn’t my fault, or his either.”

“The damned scoundrel!” said Harvey thickly.

But she reached over and put a trembling hand over his lips.

“Don’t say that,” she said.  “Don’t!  I won’t allow you to.  When I think what may have happened to him, I—­” Her voice broke.

“Go on,” Harvey said in cold tones she had never heard before.  “Tell it all, now you’ve begun it.  God knows I didn’t want to hear it.  He took you to the hotel at Dunkirk, the way those foreigners take their women.  And he established you in the house at the Front, I suppose, like a—­”

Sara Lee suddenly stood up and drew off her ring.

“You needn’t go on,” she said quietly.  “I had a decision to make to-night, and I have made it.  Ever since I came home I have been trying to go back to where we were before I left.  It isn’t possible.  You are what you always were, Harvey.  But I’ve changed.  I can’t go back.”

She put the ring into his hand.

“It isn’t that you don’t love me.  I think you do.  But I’ve been thinking things over.  It isn’t only to-night, or what you just said.  It’s because we don’t care for the same things, or believe in them.”