Here there were no lines.  Just such a stream of men as at home might issue at night from a coal mine, too weary for speech.  Only here they were packed together closely, and they did not speak, and some of them were wounded.

“There are so many!” she whispered to Henri.  “A hundred such efforts as mine would not be enough.”

“I would to God there were more!” Henri replied, through shut teeth.

“Listen, mademoiselle,” he said later.  “You cannot do all the kind work of the world.  But you can do your part.  And you will start by caring for only such as are wounded or ill.  The others can go on.  But every night some twenty or thirty, or even more, will come to your door —­men slightly wounded or too weary to go on without a rest.  And for those there will be a chair by the fire, and something hot, or perhaps a clean bandage.  It sounds small?  But in a month, think!  You will have given comfort to perhaps a thousand men.  You—­alone!”

“I—­alone!” she said in a queer choking voice.  “And what about you?  It is you who have made it possible.”

But Henri was looking down the street to where the row of poplars hid what lay beyond.  Far beyond a star shell had risen above the flat fields and floated there, a pure and lovely thing, shedding its white light over the terrain below.  It gleamed for some thirty seconds and went out.

“Like that!” Henri said to her, but in French.  “Like that you are to me.  Bright and shining—­and so soon gone.”

Sara Lee thought he had asked her if she was cold.

XI

The girl was singularly adaptable.  In a few days it was as though she had been for years in her little ruined house.  She was very happy, though there was scarcely a day when her heart was not wrung.  Such young-old faces!  Such weary men!  And such tales of wretchedness!

She got the tales by intuition rather than by words, though she was picking up some French at that.  Marie would weep openly, at times.  The most frequent story was of no news from the country held by the Germans, of families left with nothing and probably starving.  The first inquiry was always for news.  Had the American lady any way to make inquiry?

In time Sara Lee began to take notes of names and addresses, and through Mr. Travers, in London, and the Relief Commission, in Belgium, bits of information came back.  A certain family was in England at a village in Surrey.  Of another a child had died.  Here was one that could not be located, and another reported massacred during the invasion.

Later on Sara Lee was to find her little house growing famous, besieged by anxious soldiers who besought her efforts, so that she used enormous numbers of stamps and a great deal of effort.  But that was later on.  And when that time came she turned to the work as a refuge from her thoughts.  For days were coming when Sara Lee did not want to think.