Jean took a walk that morning, and stood staring for twenty minutes into a clock maker’s window, full of clocks.  After which he drew out his watch and looked at the time!

At two in the afternoon Sara Lee saw Henri’s car come into the square.  It was, if possible, more dilapidated than before, and he came like a gray whirlwind, scattering people and dogs out of his way.  Almost before he had had time to enter the hotel Sara Lee heard him in the hall, and the next moment he was bowing before her.

“I have been longer than I expected,” he explained.  “Have you been quite comfortable?”

Sara Lee, however, was gazing at him with startled eyes.  He was dirty, unshaven, and his eyes looked hollow and bloodshot.  From his neck to his heels he was smeared with mud, and his tidy tunic was torn into ragged holes.

“But you—­you have been fighting!” she gasped.

“I?  No, mademoiselle.  There has been no battle.”  His eyes left her and traveled over the room.  “They are doing everything for you?  They are attentive?”

“Everything is splendid,” said Sara Lee.  “If you won’t tell me how you got into that condition, at least you can send your coat down to me to mend.”

“My tunic!” He looked at it smilingly.  “You would do that?”

“I am nearly frantic for something to do.”

He smiled, and suddenly bending down he took her hand and kissed it.

“You are not only very beautiful, mademoiselle, but you are very good.”

He went away then, and Sara Lee got out her sewing things.  The tunic came soon, carefully brushed and very ragged.  But it was not Jean who brought it; it was the Flemish boy.

And upstairs in a small room with two beds Sara Lee might have been surprised to find Jean, the chauffeur, lying on one, while Henri shaved himself beside the other.  For Jean, of the ragged uniform and the patch over one eye, was a count of Belgium, and served Henri because he loved him.  And because, too, he was no longer useful in that little army where lay his heart.

Sometime a book will be written about the Jeans of this war, the great friendships it has brought forth between men.  And not the least of its stories will be that of this Jean of the one eye.  But its place is not here.

And perhaps there will be a book about the Henris, also.  But not for a long time, and even then with care.  For the heroes of one department of an army in the field live and die unsung.  Their bravest exploits are buried in secrecy.  And that is as it must be.  But it is a fine tale to go untold.

After he had bathed and shaved, Henri sat down at a tiny table and wrote.  He drew a plan also, from a rough one before him.  Then he took a match and burned the original drawing until it was but charred black ashes.  When he had finished Jean got up from the bed and put on his overcoat.

“To the King?” he said.