“Isn’t that part of it?”

He flung out his hands as though he despaired of making her understand.

“This man at home—­” he said bitterly; “this man who loves you so well that he let you cross the sea and come here alone—­do you love him very dearly?”

“I am promised to him.”

All at once Sara Lee saw the little parlor at home, and Harvey, gentle, rather stolid and dependable.  Oh, very dependable.  She saw him as he had looked the night he had said he loved her, rather wistful and very, very tender.  She could not hurt him so.  She had said she was going back to him, and she must go.

“I love him very much, Henri.”

Very quietly, considering the hell that was raging in him, Henri bent over and kissed her hand.  Then he turned it over, and for an instant he held his cheek against its warmth.  He went out at once, and Sara Lee heard the door slam.

XVI

Time passed quickly, as always it does when there is work to do.  Round the ruined houses the gray grass turned green again, and in travesties of gardens early spring flowers began to show a touch of color.

The first of them greeted Sara Lee one morning as she stood on her doorstep in the early sun.  She gathered them and placed them, one on each grave, in the cemetery near the poplar trees, where small wooden crosses, sometimes surmounted by a cap, marked many graves.

Marie, a silent subdued Marie, worked steadily in the little house.  She did not weep, but now and then Sara Lee found her stirring something on the stove and looking toward the quiet mill in the fields.  And once Sara Lee, surprising that look on her face, put her arms about the girl and held her for a moment.  But she did not say anything.  There was nothing to say.

With the opening up of the spring came increased movement and activity among the troops.  The beach and the sand dunes round La Panne were filled with drilling men, Belgium’s new army.  Veterans of the winter, at rest behind the lines, sat in the sun and pared potatoes for the midday meal.  Convalescents from the hospital appeared in motley garments from the Ambulance Ocean and walked along the water front, where the sea, no longer gray and sullen, rolled up in thin white lines of foam to their very feet.  Winter straw came out of wooden sabots.  Winter-bitten hands turned soft.  Canal boats blossomed out with great washings.  And the sentry at the gun emplacement in the sand up the beach gave over gathering sticks for his fire, and lay, when no one was about, in a hollow in the dune, face to the sky.

So spring came to that small fragment of Belgium which had been saved, spring and hope.  Soon now the great and powerful Allies would drive out the Huns, and all would be as it had been.  Splendid rumors were about.  The Germans were already yielding at La Bassee.  There was to be a great drive along the entire Front, and hopefully one would return home in time for the spring planting.