“He was ill, undoubtedly,” he said.  “Even when he went to London he was ill, and not responsible.  The King understands that.  He was a brave boy, mademoiselle.”

But the last element of hope seemed to go with that verification of his illness.  He was delirious, and he had gone in that condition into the filthy chill waters of the inundation.  Well and sane there had been a chance, but plunging wild-eyed and reckless, into that hell across, there was none.

She did her best in the evenings to be cheerful, to take the place, in her small and serious fashion, of Henri’s old gayety.  But the soldiers whispered among themselves that mademoiselle was in grief, as they were, for the blithe young soldier who was gone.

What hope Sara Lee had had died almost entirely early in December.  On the evening of a day when a steady rain had turned the roads into slimy pitfalls, and the ditches to canals, there came, brought by a Belgian corporal, the man who swore that Henri had passed him in his trench while the others slept, had shoved him aside, which was unlike his usual courtesy, and had climbed out over the top.

To Sara Lee this Hutin told his story.  A short man with a red beard and a kindly smile that revealed teeth almost destroyed from neglect, he was at first diffident in the extreme.

“It was the captain, mademoiselle,” he asserted.  “I know him well.  He has often gone on his errands from near my post.  I am”—­he smiled—­“I am usually in the front line.”

“What did he do?”

“He had no cap, mademoiselle.  I thought that was odd.  And as you know —­he does not wear his own uniform on such occasions.  But he wore his own uniform, so that at first I did not know what he intended.”

“Later on,” she asked, “you—­did you hear anything?”

“The usual sniping, mademoiselle.  Nothing more.”

“He went through the inundation?”

“How else could he go?  Through the wire first, at the barrier, where there is an opening, if one knows the way, I saw him beyond it, by the light of a fusee.  There is a road there, or what was once a road.  He stood there.  Then the lights went out.”

XXX

On a wild night in January Sara Lee inaugurated a new branch of service.  There had been a delay in sending up to the Front the men who had been on rest, and an incessant bombardment held the troops prisoners in their trenches.

A field kitchen had been destroyed.  The men were hungry, disheartened, wet through.  They needed her, she felt.  Even the little she could do would help.  All day she had made soup, and at evening Marie led from its dilapidated stable the little horse that Henri had once brought up, trundling its cart behind it.  The boiler of the cart was scoured, a fire lighted in the fire box.  Marie, a country girl, harnessed the shaggy little animal, but with tears of terror.

“You will be killed, mademoiselle,” she protested, weeping.