" Sara Lee said, stirring her soup
preparatory to pouring it out. "I shall be very careful."

"You will not come back, mademoiselle. You do not care to live, and to
such--"

"Those are the ones who live on," said Sara Lee gravely, and poured out
her soup.

She went quite alone. There was a great deal of noise, but no shells
fell near her. She led the little horse by its head, and its presence
gave her comfort. It had a sense that she had not, too, for it kept her
on the road.

In those still early days the Belgian trenches were quite accessible
from the rear. There were no long tunneled ways to traverse to reach
them. One went along through the darkness until the sound of men's
voices, the glare of charcoal in a bucket bored with holes, the flicker
of a match, told of the buried army almost underfoot or huddled in its
flimsy shelters behind the railway embankment.

Beyond the lines a sentry stopped her, hailing her sharply.

"_Qui vive_?"

"It is I," she called through the rain. "I have brought some chocolate
and some soup."

He lowered his bayonet.

"Pass, mademoiselle."

She went on, the rumbling of her little cart deadened by the Belgian
guns.

Through the near-by trenches that night went the word that near the
Repose of the Angels--which was but a hole in the ground and scarcely
reposeful--there was to be had hot soup and chocolate and cigarettes.
A dozen or so at a time, the men were allowed to come. Officers brought
their great capes to keep the girl dry. Boards appeared as if by magic
for her to stand on. The rain and the bombardment had both ceased, and
a full moon made the lagoon across the embankment into a silver lake.

When the last soup had been dipped from the tall boiler, when the final
drops of chocolate had oozed from the faucet, Sara Lee turned and went
back to the little house again. But before she went she stood a moment
staring across toward that land of the shadow on the other side, where
Henri had gone and had not returned.

Once, when the King had decorated her, she had wished that, wherever
Uncle James might be, on the other side, he could see what was happening.
And now she wondered if Henri could know that she had come back, and was
again looking after his men while she waited for that reunion he had so
firmly believed in.

Then she led the little horse back along the road.

At the poplar trees she turned and looked behind, toward the trenches.
The grove was but a skeleton