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.

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