*

The early days of the great war saw Sara Lee playing her part in the
setting of a city in Pennsylvania. An ugly city, but a wealthy one. It
is only fair to Sara Lee to say that she shared in neither quality. She
was far from ugly, and very, very far from rich. She had started her
part with a full stage, to carry on the figure, but one by one they had
gone away into the wings and had not come back. At nineteen she was
alone knitting by the fire, with no idea whatever that the back drop was
of painted net, and that beyond it, waiting for its moment, was the
forest of adventure. A strange forest, too--one that Sara Lee would
not have recognised as a forest. And a prince of course--but a prince
as strange and mysterious as the forest.

The end of December, 1914, found Sara Lee quite contented. If it was
resignation rather than content, no one but Sara Lee knew the difference.
Knitting, too; but not for soldiers. She was, to be candid, knitting an
afghan against an interesting event which involved a friend of hers.

Sara Lee rather deplored the event--in her own mind, of course, for in
her small circle young unmarried women accepted the major events of life
without question, and certainly without conversation. She never, for
instance, allowed her Uncle James, with whom she lived, to see her
working at the afghan; and even her Aunt Harriet had supposed it to be a
sweater until it assumed uncompromising proportions.

Sara Lee's days, up to the twentieth of December, 1914, had been much
alike. In the mornings she straightened up her room, which she had
copied from one in a woman's magazine, with the result that it gave
somehow the impression of a baby's bassinet, being largely dotted Swiss
and ribbon. Yet in a way it was a perfect setting for Sara Lee herself.
It was fresh and virginal, and very, very neat and white. A resigned
little room, like Sara Lee, resigned to being tucked away in a corner
and to having no particular outlook. Peaceful, too.

Sometimes in the morning between straightening her room and going to the
market for Aunt Harriet, Sara Lee looked at a newspaper. So she knew
there was a war. She read the headings, and when the matter came up for
mention at the little afternoon bridge club, as it did now and then after
the prizes were distributed, she always said "Isn't it horrible!" and
changed the subject.

On the night of the nineteenth of December Sara Lee had read her chapter
in the Bible--she re