ray Henri's were
blue. Such a queer setting for a king it was--a tawdry summer home,
ill-heated and cheaply furnished. But by the presence of Belgium's man
of all time it became royal.

So Henri bowed and waited, and soon the King got up and shook hands with
him. As a matter of fact they knew each other rather well, but to
explain more would be to tell that family name of Henri's which must
never be known.

"Sit down," said the King gravely. And he got a box of cigars from the
mantelpiece and offered it. "I sent for you because I want to talk to
you. You are doing valuable work."

"I am glad you think it so, sire," said Henri rather unhappily, because
he felt what was coming. "But I cannot do it all the time. There are
intervals--"

An ordinary mortal may not interrupt a king, but a king may interrupt
anything, except perhaps a German bombardment.

"Intervals, of course. If there were not you would be done in a month."

"But I am a soldier. My place is--"

"Your place is where you are most useful."

Henri was getting nothing out of the cigar. He flung it away and got up.

"I want to fight too," he said stubbornly. "We need every man, and I
am--rather a good shot. I do this other because I can do it. I speak
their infernal tongue. But it's dirty business at the best, sire." He
remembered to put in the sire, but rather ungraciously. Indeed he shot
it out like a bullet.

"Dirty business!" said the King thoughtfully. "I see what you mean. It
is, of course. But--not so dirty as the things they have done, and are
doing."

He sat still and let Henri stamp up and down, because, as has been said,
he knew the boy. And he had never been one to insist on deference,
which was why he got so much of it. But at last he got up and when
Henri stood still, rather ashamed of himself, he put an arm over the
boy's shoulders.

"I want you to do this thing, for me. And this thing only," he said.
"It is the work you do best. There are others who can fight, but--I do
not know any one else who can do as you have done."

Henri promised. He would have promised to go out and drown himself in
the sea, just beyond the wind-swept little garden, for the tall grave
man who stood before him. Then he bowed and went out, and the King
went back to his plain pine table and his work. That was the reason why
Sara Lee found him asleep on the floor by her kitchen stove that morning,
and went back to her cold bed to lie awake and think. But no exp