Nothing was changed—­and everything.  There was no Rene to smile his adoring smile, but Marie came out, sobbing and laughing, and threw herself into the girl’s arms.  The little house was the same, save for a hole in the kitchen wall.  There were the great piles of white bowls and the shining kettles.  There was the corner of her room, patched by Rene’s hands, now so long quiet.  A few more shell holes in the street, many more little crosses in the field near the poplar trees, more Allied aeroplanes in the air—­that was all that was changed.

But to Sara Lee everything was changed, for all that.  The little house was grave and still, like a house of the dead.  Once it had echoed to young laughter, had resounded to the noise and excitement of Henri’s every entrance.  Even when he was not there it was as though it but waited for him to stir it into life, and small echoes of his gayety had seemed to cling to its old walls.

Sara Lee stood on the doorstep and looked within.  She had come back.  Here she would work and wait, and if in the goodness of providence he should come back, here he would find her, all the empty months gone and forgotten.

If he did not—­

“I shall still be calling you, and waiting,” he had written.  She, too, would call and wait, and if not here, then surely in the fullness of time which is eternity the call would be answered.

In October Sara Lee took charge again of the little house.  Mrs. Cameron went back to England, but not until the Traverses’ plan had been revealed.  They would support the little house, as a memorial to the son who had died.  It was, Mrs. Travers wrote, the finest tribute they could offer to his memory, that night after night tired and ill and wounded men might find sanctuary, even for a little time, under her care.

Luxuries began to come across the channel, food and dressings and tobacco.  Knitted things, too; for another winter was coming, and already the frost lay white on the fields in the mornings.  The little house took on a new air of prosperity.  There were days when it seemed almost swaggering with opulence.

It had need of everything, however.  With the prospect of a second winter, when an advance was impossible, the Germans took to hammering again.  Bombardment was incessant.  The little village was again under suspicion, and there came days of terror when it seemed as though even the fallen masonry must be reduced to powder.  The church went entirely.

By December Sara Lee had ceased to take refuge during the bombardments.  The fatalism of the Front had got her.  She would die or live according to the great plan, and nothing could change that.  She did not greatly care which, except for her work, and even that she felt could be carried on by another as well.

There was no news of Henri, but once the King’s equerry, going by, had stopped to see her and had told her the story.