A sort of informal council took place occasionally in the little house.  Maps replaced the dressings on the table in the salle a manger, and junior officers, armed with Sara Lee’s box of pins, thrust back the enemy at various points and proved conclusively that his position was untenable.  They celebrated these paper victories with Sara Lee’s tea, and went away the better for an hour or so of hope and tea and a girl’s soft voice and quiet eyes.

Now and then there was one, of course, who lagged behind his fellows, with a yearning tenderness in his face that a glance from the girl would have quickly turned to love.  But Sara Lee had no coquetry.  When, as occasionally happened, there was a bit too much fervor when her hand was kissed, she laid it where it belonged—­to loneliness and the spring—­ and became extremely maternal and very, very kind.  Which—­both of them —­are death blows to young love.

The winter floods were receding.  Along the Yser Canal mud-caked flats began to appear, with here and there rusty tangles of barbed wire.  And with the lessening of the flood came new activities to the little house.  The spring drive was coming.

There was spring indeed, everywhere but in Henri’s heart.

Day after day messages were left with Sara Lee by men in uniform—­ sometimes letters, sometimes a word.  And these she faithfully cared for until such time as Jean came for them.  Now and then it was Henri who came, but when he stayed in the village he made his headquarters at the house of the mill.  There, with sacking over the windows, he wrote his reports by lamplight, reports which Jean carried back to the villa in the fishing village by the sea.

However, though he no longer came and went as before, Henri made frequent calls at the house of mercy.  But now he came in the evenings, when the place was full of men.  Sara Lee was doing more dressings than before.  The semi-armistice of winter was over, and there were nights when a row of wounded men lay on the floor in the little salle a manger and waited, in a sort of dreadful quiet, to be taken away.

Rumors came of hard fighting farther along the line, and sometimes, on nights when the clouds hung low, the flashes of the guns at Ypres looked like incessant lightning.  From the sand dunes at Nieuport and Dixmude there was firing also, and the air seemed sometimes to be full of scouting planes.

The Canadians were moving toward the Front at Neuve Chapelle at that time.  And one day a lorry, piled high with boxes, rolled and thumped down the street, and halted by Rene.

“Rather think we are lost,” explained the driver, grinning sheepishly at Rene.

There were four boys in khaki on the truck, and not a word of French among them.  Sara Lee, who rolled her own bandages now, heard the speech and came out.

“Good gracious!” she said, and gave an alarmed glance at the sky.  But it was the noon hour, when every good German abandons war for food, and the sky was empty.