g Sara Lee's monthly
allowance. But mostly he sat in the mill house and waited. He could
not read.

"You do not eat at all, Jean," Sara Lee said to him more than once. And
twice she insisted that he was feverish, and placed a hand that was
somewhat marred with much peeling of vegetables, on his forehead.

"I am entirely well, mademoiselle," he would say, and draw back. He had
anxieties enough just now without being reminded by the touch of a
woman's hand of all that he had lost.

Long before that Sara Lee had learned not to question Jean about Henri's
absences. Even his knowledge, now, that she knew something of Henri's
work, did not remove the barrier. So Sara Lee waited, as did Jean, but
more helplessly. She knew something was wrong, but she had not Jean's
privilege of going at night to the trenches and there waiting, staring
over the gray water with its ugly floating shadows, for Henri to emerge
from the flood.

Something rather forced and mechanical there was those days in her work.
Her smile was rather set. She did not sleep well. And one night she
violated Henri's orders and walked across the softened fields to beyond
the poplar trees.

There was nothing to see except an intermittent flash from the clouds
that hung low over the sea at Nieuport, where British gunboats were
bombarding the coast; or the steady streaks from the Ypres salient, where
night and day the guns never rested.

From the Belgian trenches, fifteen hundred feet or so away, there was no
sound. A German electric signal blazed its message in code, and went out
quickly. Now and then a rifle shot, thin and sharp, rang out from where,
under the floating starlights, keen eyes on each side watched for
movements on the other.

Sara Lee sat down under a tree and watched for a while. Then she found
herself crying softly. It was all so sad, and useless, and cruel. And
somewhere there ahead was Henri, Henri with his blue eyes, his smile,
the ardor of his young arms--Henri, who had been to her many friends.

Sara Lee had never deceived herself about Henri. She loved him. But
she was quite certain she was not in love with him, which is entirely
different. She knew that this last was impossible, because she was
engaged to Harvey. What was probably the truth was that she loved them
both in entirely different ways. Men have always insisted on such
possibilities, and have even asserted their right, now and then, to
love two women at the same time. But wom