I shall always love you, Sara Lee.  I guess I’m that sort.  But sometimes I wonder if, when we are married, you will leave me again in some such uncalled-for way.  I warn you now, dear, that I won’t stand for it.  I’m suffering too much. 
          
                               Harvey.

Sara Lee wore the letter next her heart, but it did not warm her.  She went through the next few hours in a sort of frozen composure and ate nothing at all.

Then came the bombardment.

Henri and Jean, driving out from Dunkirk, had passed on the road ammunition trains, waiting in the road until dark before moving on to the Front.  Henri had given Sara Lee her letter, had watched jealously for its effect on her, and then, his own face white and set, had gone on down the ruined street.

Here within the walls of a destroyed house he disappeared.  The place was evidently familiar to him, for he moved without hesitation.  Broken furniture still stood in the roofless rooms, and in front of a battered bureau Henri paused.  Still whistling under his breath, he took off his uniform and donned a strange one, of greenish gray.  In the pocket of the blouse he stuffed a soft round cap of the same color.  Then, resuming his cape and Belgian cap, with its tassel over his forehead, he went out into the street again.  He carried in his belt a pistol, but it was not the one he had brought in with him.  As a matter of fact, by the addition of the cap in his pocket, Henri was at that moment in the full uniform of a lieutenant of a Bavarian infantry regiment, pistol and all.

He went down the street and along the road toward the poplars.  He met the first detachment of men out of the trenches just beyond the trees, and stepped aside into the mud to let them pass, calling a greeting to them out of the darkness.

“Bonsoir!” they replied, and saluted stiffly.  There were few among them who did not know his voice, and fewer still who did not suspect his business.

“A brave man,” they said among themselves as they went on.

“How long will he last?” asked one young soldier, a boy in his teens.

“One cannot live long who does as he does,” replied a gaunt and bearded man.  “But it is a fine life while it continues.  A fine life!”

The boy stepped out of the shuffling line and looked behind him.  He could see only the glow of Henri’s eternal cigarette.  “I should like to go with him,” he muttered wistfully.

The ammunition train was in the village now.  It kept the center of the road, lest it should slide into the mud on either side and be mired.  The men moved out of its way into the ditch, grumbling.

Henri went whistling softly down the road.

The first shell fell in the neglected square.  The second struck the rear wagons of the ammunition train.  Henri heard the terrific explosion that followed, and turning ran madly back into the village.  More shells fell into the road.  The men scattered like partridges, running for the fields, but the drivers of the ammunition wagons beat their horses and came lurching and shouting down the road.