e air, from some shelter."

"There is no shelter," shivered the girl.

He groped for her hand in the darkness, and so they stood, hand in hand,
like two children, waiting for what might come.

It was not until the thing was over that he told her. He had gone up
first and so that she would not happen on his silent figure unwarned,
had carried Rene to the open upper floor, where he lay, singularly
peaceful, face up to the awful beauty of the night.

"Good night, little brother," Henri said to him, and left him there with
a heavy heart. Never again would Rene sit and whittle on the doorstep
and sing his tuneless Tipperaree. Never again would he gaze with boyish
adoring eyes at Sara Lee as she moved back and forth in the little house.

Henri stared up at the sky. The moon looked down, cold, and cruelly
bright, on the vanishing squadron of death, on the destroyed town and on
the boy's white face. Somewhere, Henri felt, vanishing like the German
_taubes_, but to peace instead of war, was moving Rene's brave and smiling
spirit--a boyish angel, eager and dauntless, and still looking up.

Henri took off his cap and crossed himself.

Another sentry took Rene's place the next day, but the little house had
lost something it could not regain. And a greater loss was to come.

Jean brought out the mail that day. For Sara Lee, moving about silent
and red-eyed, there was a letter from Mr. Travers. He inclosed a hundred
pounds and a clipping from a London newspaper entitled The Little House
of Mercy.

"Evidently," he wrote, "you were right and we were wrong. One-half of
the inclosed check is from my wife, who takes this method of showing her
affectionate gratitude. The balance is from myself. Once, some months
ago, I said to you that almost you restored my faith in human nature.
To-day I may say that, in these hours of sorrow for us all, what you have
done and are doing has brought into my gray day a breath of hope."

There was another clipping, but no comment. It recorded the death of a
Reginald Alexander Travers, aged thirty.

It was then that Sara Lee, who was by way of thinking for herself those
days, and of thinking clearly, recognized the strange new self-abnegation
of the English--their attitude not so much of suppressing their private
griefs as of refusing to obtrude them. A strongly individualistic people,
they were already commencing to think nationally. Grief was a private
matter, to be borne privately. To the world