. You would have been the better for an English
education, Jean."

"A canal in March!" Jean grunted. "You will end badly."

Henri looked longingly at the water.

"Had I a dry towel," he said, "I would go in again."

Jean looked at him with his one eye.

"You would be prettier without those scars," he observed. But in his
heart he prayed that there might be no others added to them, that
nothing might mar or destroy that bright and youthful body.

"_Depechez-vous! Vous sommes presses_!" he added.

But Henri was minded to play. He girded himself with the towel and
struck an attitude.

"The Russian ballet, Jean!" he said, and capering madly sent Jean
into deep grumbles of laughter by his burlesque.

"I must have exercise," Henri said at last when, breathless and with
flying hair, he began to dress. "That, too, is my English schooling. If
you, Jean--"

"To the devil with your English schooling!" Jean remonstrated.

Henri sobered quickly after that. The exhilaration of his cold plunge
was over.

"The American lady?" he asked. "She is all right?"

"She is worried. There is not enough money."

Henri frowned.

"And I have nothing!"

This opened up an old wound with Jean.

"If you would be practical and take pay for what you are doing," he began.

Henri cut him short.

"Pay!" he said. "What is there to pay me with? And what is the use of
reopening the matter? A man may be a spy for love of his country. God
knows there is enough lying and deceit in the business. But to be a spy
for money--never!"

There was a little silence. Then: "Now for mademoiselle," said Henri.
"She must be out of the village to-night. And that, dear friend, must
be your affair. She does not like me."

All the life had gone out of his voice.

XV

"But why should I go?" Sara Lee asked. "It is kind of you to ask me,
Jean. But I am here to work, not to play."

Long ago Sara Lee had abandoned her idea of Jean as a paid chauffeur.
She even surmised, from something Marie had said, that he had been a
person of importance in the Belgium of before the war. So she was
grateful, but inclined to be obstinate.

"You have been so much alone, mademoiselle--"

"Alone!"

"Cut off from your own kind. And now and then one finds, at the hotel
in Dunkirk, some English nurses who are having a holiday. You would
like to talk to them perhaps."

"Jean," she said unexpectedly, "why don't you tell me the truth? You
want me to leave the vil