In London she went to the Traverses, as before.  But with a difference too.  For Sara Lee had learned the strangeness of the English, who are slow to friendships but who never forget.  Indeed a telegram met her at Liverpool asking her to stop with them in London.  She replied, refusing, but thanking them, and saying she would call the next afternoon.

Everything was the same at Morley’s:  Rather a larger percentage of men in uniform, perhaps; greater crowds in the square; a little less of the optimism which in the spring had predicted victory before autumn.  But the same high courage, for all that.

August greeted her like an old friend.  Even the waiters bowed to her, and upstairs the elderly chambermaid fussed over her like a mother.

“And you’re going back!” she exclaimed.  “Fancy that, now!  You are brave, miss.”

But her keen eyes saw a change in Sara Lee.  Her smile was the same, but there were times when she forgot to finish a sentence, and she stood, that first morning, for an hour by the window, looking out as if she saw nothing.

She went, before the visit to the Traverses, to the Church of Saint Martin in the Fields.  It was empty, save for a woman in a corner, who did not kneel, but sat staring quietly before her.  Sara Lee prayed an inarticulate bit of a prayer, that what the Traverses would have to tell her should not be the thing that she feared, but that, if it were, she be given courage to meet it and to go on with her work.

The Traverses would know; Mrs. Cameron was a friend.  They would know about Henri, and about Jean.  Soon, within the hour, she would learn everything.  So she asked for strength, and then sat there for a time, letting the peace of the old church quiet her, as had the broken walls and shattered altar of that other church, across the channel.

It was rather a surprise to Sara Lee to have Mrs. Travers put her arms about her and kiss her.  Mr. Travers, too, patted her hand when he took it.  But they had, for all that, the reserve of their class.  Much that they felt about Sara Lee they did not express even to each other.

“We are so grateful to you,” Mrs. Travers said.  “I am only one mother, and of course now—­” She looked down at her black dress.  “But how many others there are who will want to thank you, when this terrible thing is over and they learn about you!”

Mr. Travers had been eying Sara Lee.

“Didn’t use you up, did it?” he asked.  “You’re not looking quite fit.”

Sara Lee was very pale just then.  In a moment she would know.

“I’m quite well,” she said.  “I—­do you hear from Mrs. Cameron?”

“Frequently.  She has worked hard, but she is not young.”  It was Mrs. Travers who spoke.  “She’s afraid of the winter there.  I rather think, since you want to go back, that she will be glad to turn your domain over to you for a time.”