Sara Lee reached down into her suitcase and brought up Harvey’s picture.

“I would like you to see this,” she said a little breathlessly.  “It is the man I am to marry.”

For a moment she thought Henri was not going to take it.  But he came, rather slowly, and held out his hand for it.  He went with it to the window and stood there for some time looking down at it.

“When are you going to marry him, mademoiselle?”

“As soon as I go back.”

Sara Lee had expected some other comment, but he made none.  He put the photograph very quietly on the bed before her, and gathered up the linen and the pillow in his arms.

“I shall send for your luggage, mademoiselle.  And you will find me at the car outside, waiting.”

And so it was that a very silent Henri sat with Jean going out to that strange land which was to be Sara Lee’s home for many months.  And a very silent Sara Lee, flanked with pillow and blankets, who sat back alone and tried to recall the tones of Harvey’s voice.

And failed.

X

From Dunkirk to the Front, the road, after the Belgian line was passed, was lightly guarded.  Henri came out of a reverie to explain to Sara Lee.

“We have not many men,” he said.  “And those that remain are holding the line.  It is very weary, our army.”

Now at home Uncle James had thought very highly of the Belgian Army.  He had watched the fight they made, and he had tried to interest Sara Lee in it.  But without much result.  She had generally said:  “Isn’t it wonderful!” or “horrible,” as the case might be, and put out of her mind as soon as possible the ringing words he had been reading.  But she had not forgotten, she found.  They came back to her as she rode through that deserted countryside.  Henri, glancing back somewhat later, found her in tears.

He climbed back at once into the rear of the car and sat down beside her.

“You are homesick, I think?”

“Yes.  But not for myself.  I am just homesick for all the people who have lost their homes.  You—­and Jean, and all the rest.”

“Some day I shall tell you about my home and what has happened to it,” he said gravely.  “Not now.  It is not pleasant.  But you must remember this:  We are going back home, we Belgians.”  And after a little pause:  “Just as you are.”

He lapsed into silence after that, and Sara Lee, stealing a glance at him, saw his face set and hard.  She had a purely maternal impulse to reach over and pat his hand.

Jean did not like Henri’s shift to the rear of the car.  He drove with a sort of irritable feverishness, until Henri leaned over and touched him on the shoulder.

“We have mademoiselle with us, Jean,” he said in French.

“It is not difficult to believe,” growled Jean.  But he slackened his pace somewhat.