That evening, however, when he returned she ventured a question.  They dined together, the two of them, for the first time at the little house alone.  Always before Jean had made the third.  And it was a real meal, for Sara Lee had sacrificed a bit of mutton from her soup, and Henri had produced from his pocket a few small and withered oranges.

“A gift!” he said gayly, and piled them in a precarious heap in the center of the table.  On the exact top he placed a walnut.

“Now speak gently and walk softly,” he said.  “It is a work of art and not to be lightly demolished.”

He was alternately gay and silent during the meal, and more than once Sara Lee found his eyes on her, with something new and different in them.

“Just you and I together!” he said once.  “It is very wonderful.”

And again:  “When you go back to him, shall you tell him of your good friend who has tried hard to serve you?”

“Of course I shall,” said Sara Lee.  “And he will write you, I know.  He will be very grateful.”

But it was she who was silent after that, because somehow it would be hard to make Harvey understand.  And as for his being grateful—­

“Mademoiselle,” said Henri later on, “would you object if I make a suggestion?  You wear a very valuable ring.  I think it is entirely safe, but—­who can tell?  And also it is not entirely kind to remind men who are far from all they love that you—­”

Sara Lee flushed and took off her ring.

“I am glad you told me,” she said.  And Henri did not explain that the Belgian soldiers would not recognize the ring as either a diamond or a symbol, but that to him it was close to torture.

It was when he insisted on carrying out the dishes, singing a little French song as he did so, that Sara Lee decided to speak what was in her mind.  He was in high spirits then.

“Mademoiselle,” he said, “shall I show you something that the eye of no man has seen before, and that, when we have seen it, shall never be seen again?”

On her interested consent he called in Marie and Rene, making a great ceremony of the matter, and sending Marie into hysterical giggling.

“Now see!” he said earnestly.  “No eye before has ever seen or will again.  Will you guess, mademoiselle?  Or you, Marie?  Rene?”

“A tear?” ventured Sara Lee.

“But—­do I look like weeping?”

He did not, indeed.  He stood, tall and young and smiling before them, and produced from his pocket the walnut.

“Perceive!” he said, breaking it open and showing the kernel.  “Has human eye ever before seen it?” He thrust it into Marie’s open mouth.  “And it is gone!  Voila tout!”

It was that evening, while Sara Lee cut bandages and Henri rolled them, that she asked him what his work was.  He looked rather surprised, and rolled for a moment without replying.  Then:  “I am a man of all work,” he said.  “What you call odd jobs.”