came at the best veiled reproach, the society had
always sent its enthusiastic approval.

She read it twice before she understood, and it was only when she read
Belle's letter again that she began to comprehend. She was recalled;
and the recall was Harvey's work.

She was very close to hating him that day. He had never understood.
She would go back to him, as she had promised; but always, all the rest
of their lives, there would be this barrier between them. To the
barrier of his bitterness would be added her own resentment. She could
never even talk to him of her work, of those great days when in her
small way she had felt herself a part of the machinery of mercy of
the war.

Harvey had lost something out of Sara Lee's love for him. He had done
it himself, madly, despairingly. She still loved him, she felt. Nothing
could change that or her promise to him. But with that love there was
something now of fear. And she felt, too, that after all the years she
had known him she had not known him at all. The Harvey she had known
was a tender and considerate man, soft-spoken, slow to wrath, always
gentle. But the Harvey of his letters and of the recall was a stranger.

It was the result of her upbringing, probably, that she had no thought
of revolt. Her tie to Harvey was a real tie. By her promise to him her
life was no longer hers to order. It belonged to some one else, to be
ordered for her. But, though she accepted, she was too clear a thinker
not to resent.

When Henri returned, toward dawn of the following night, he did not come
alone. Sara Lee, rising early, found two men in her kitchen--one of
them Henri, who was making coffee, and a soldier in a gray-green uniform,
with a bad bruise over one eye and a sulky face. His hands were tied,
but otherwise he sat at ease, and Henri, having made the coffee, held a
cup to his lips.

"It is good for the spirits, man," he said in German. "Drink it."

The German took it, first gingerly, then eagerly. Henri was in high
good humor.

"See, I have brought you a gift!" he exclaimed on seeing Sara Lee. "What
shall we do with him? Send him to America? To show the appearance of
the madmen of Europe?"

The prisoner was only a boy, such a boy as Henri himself; but a peasant,
and muscular. Beside his bulk Henri looked slim as a reed. Henri eyed
him with a certain tolerant humor.

"He is young, and a Bavarian," he said. "Other wise I should have
killed him, for he fought hard. He h