Late in August Sara Lee broke her engagement with Harvey. She had been
away, at Cousin Jennie's, for a month, and for the first time since her
return she had had time to think. In the little suburban town there
were long hours of quiet when Cousin Jennie mended on the porch and Aunt
Harriet, enjoying a sort of reflected glory from Sara Lee, presided
at Red Cross meetings.
Sara Lee decided to send for Harvey, and he came for a week-end, arriving
pathetically eager, but with a sort of defiance too. He was determined
to hold her, but to hold her on his own terms.
Aunt Harriet had been vaguely uneasy, but Harvey's arrival seemed to put
everything right. She even kissed him when he came, and took great pains
to carry off Cousin Jennie when she showed an inclination toward
conversation and a seat on the porch.
Sara Lee had made a desperate resolve. She intended to lay all her
cards on the table. He should know all that there was to know. If,
after that, he still wanted to hold her--but she did not go so far.
She was so sure he would release her.
It was a despairing thing to do, but she was rather despairing those
days. There had been no letter from Henri or from Jean. She had written
them both several times, to Dunkirk, to the Savoy in London, to the
little house near the Front. But no replies had come. Yet mail was
going through. Mabel Andrews' letters from Boulogne came regularly.
When August went by, with no letters save Harvey's, begging her to come
back, she gave up at last. In the little church on Sundays, with Jennie
on one side and Aunt Harriet on the other, she voiced small silent
prayers--that the thing she feared had not happened. But she could not
think of Henri as not living. He was too strong, too vital.
She did not understand herself those days. She was desperately unhappy.
Sometimes she wondered if it would not be easier to know the truth, even
if that truth comprehended the worst.
Once she received, from some unknown hand, a French journal, and pored
over it for days with her French dictionary, to find if it contained any
news. It was not until a week later that she received a letter from
Mabel, explaining that she had sent the journal, which contained a
description of her hospital.
All of Harvey's Sunday she spent in trying to bring her courage to the
point of breaking the silence he had imposed on her, but it was not
until evening that she succeeded. The house was empty. The family had
gone to church. On the veranda, with the heavy scent of phlox at night
permeating the still air, Sara Lee made her confession. She began at
the beginning. Harvey did not stir--until she told of the way she had
stowed away to cross the channel. Then he moved.