Perhaps Sara Lee’s real growth began that night, over that simple dinner at the Hotel des Arcades.

“I wish,” she said at last, “that Uncle James could have heard all this.  He was always so puzzled about it all.  And—­you make it so clear.”

When dinner was over a bit of tension had relaxed in her somewhat.  She had been too close, for too long.  And when a group of Belgian officers, learning who she was, asked to be presented and gravely thanked her, she flushed with happiness.

“We must see if mademoiselle shall not have a medal,” said the only one who spoke English.

“A medal?  For what?”

“For courage,” he said, bowing.  “Belgium has little to give, but it can at least do honor to a brave lady.”

Jean was smiling when they passed on.  What a story would this slip of a girl take home with her!

But:  “I don’t think I want a medal, Jean,” she said.  “I didn’t come for that.  And after all it is you and Henri who have done the thing—­not I.”

Accustomed to women of a more sophisticated class, Jean had at first taken her naivete for the height of subtlety.  He was always expecting her to betray herself.  But after that evening with her he changed.  Just such simplicity had been his wife’s.  Sometimes Sara Lee reminded him of her—­the upraising of her eyes or an unstudied gesture.

He sighed.

“You are very wonderful, you Americans,” he said.  It was the nearest to a compliment that he had ever come.  And after that evening he was always very gentle with her.  Once he had protected her because Henri had asked him to do so; now he himself became in his silent way her protector.

The ride home through the dark was very quiet.  Sara Lee sat beside him watching the stars and growing increasingly anxious as they went, not too rapidly, toward the little house.  There were no lights.  Air raids had grown common in Dunkirk, and there were no street lights in the little city.  Once on the highway Jean lighted the lamps, but left them very low, and two miles from the little house he put them out altogether.  They traveled by starlight then, following as best they could the tall trees that marked the road.  Now and then they went astray at that, and once they tilted into the ditch and had hard pulling to get out.

At the top of the street Jean stopped and went on foot a little way down.  He came back, with the report that new shells had made the way impassable; and again Sara Lee shivered.  If the little house was gone!

But it was there, and lighted too.  Through its broken shutters came the yellow glow of the oil lamp that now hung over the table in the salle a manger.

Whatever Jean’s anxieties had been fell from him as he pushed open the door.  Henri’s voice was the first thing they heard.  He was too much occupied to notice their approach.

So it was that Sara Lee saw, for the last time, the miller and his son, Maurice; saw them, but did not know them, for over their heads were bags of their own sacking, with eyeholes roughly cut in them.  Their hands were bound, and three soldiers were waiting to take them away.