He turned on her almost savagely.

“That’s not the point!” he snapped out.  “I don’t begrudge the poor devils their soup.  What I feel is this:  If she’d cared a tinker’s damn for me she’d never have gone.  That’s all.”

He returned to a moody survey of the picture.

“Look at it!” he said.  “She insists that she’s safe.  But that fellow’s got a gun.  What for, if she’s so safe?  And look at that house!  There’s a corner shot away; and it’s got no upper floor.  Safe!”

Belle held out her hand.

“I must return the picture to the society, Harve.”

“Not just yet,” he said ominously.  “I want to look at it.  I haven’t got it all yet.  And I’ll return it myself—­with a short speech.”

“Harvey!”

“Well,” he retorted, “why shouldn’t I tell that lot of old scandalmongers what I think of them?  They’ll sit here safe at home and beg money—­God, one of them was in the office to-day!—­and send a young girl over to—­ You’d better get out, Belle.  I’m not company for any one to-night.”

She turned away, but he came after her, and suddenly putting his arms round her he kissed her.

“Don’t worry about me,” he said.  “I’m done with wearing my heart on my sleeve.  She looks happy, so I guess I can be.”  He released her.  “Good night.  I’ll return the picture.”

He sat up very late, alternately reading the report and looking at the picture.  It was unfortunate that Sara Lee had smiled into the camera.  Coupled with her blowing hair it had given her a light-heartedness, a sort of joyousness, that hurt him to the soul.

He made some mad plans after he had turned out the lights—­to flirt wildly with the unattached girls he knew; to go to France and confront Sara Lee and then bring her home.  Or—­He had found a way.  He lay there and thought it over, and it bore the test of the broken sleep that followed.  In the morning, dressing, he wondered he had not thought of it before.  He was more cheerful at breakfast than he had been for weeks.

XIX

In the little house of mercy two weeks went by, and then a third.  Soldiers marching out to the trenches sometimes wore flowers tucked gayly in their caps.  More and more Allied aeroplanes were in the air.  Sometimes, standing in the streets, Sara Lee saw one far overhead, while balloon-shaped clouds of bursting shells hung far below it.

Once or twice in the early morning a German plane, flying so low that one could easily see the black cross on each wing, reconnoitered the village for wagon trains or troops.  Always they found it empty.

Hope had almost fled now.  In the afternoons Marie went to the ruined church, and there knelt before the heap of marble and masonry that had once been the altar, and prayed.  And Sara Lee, who had been brought up a Protestant and had never before entered a Catholic church, took to going there too.  In some strange fashion the peace of former days seemed to cling to the little structure, roofless as it was.  On quiet days its silence was deeper than elsewhere.  On days of much firing the sound from within its broken walls seemed deadened, far away.