While she was breakfasting the next morning there was a tap at the door,
and thinking it the maid she called to her to come in.
But it was Jean, an anxious Jean, twisting his cap in his hands.
"You have had a message from the captain, mademoiselle?"
"No, Jean."
"He was to have returned during the night. He has not come,
mademoiselle."
Sara Lee forgot her morning negligee in Jean's harassed face.
"But--where did he go?"
Jean shrugged his shoulders and did not reply.
"Are you worried about him?"
"I am anxious, mademoiselle. But I am often anxious; and--he always
returns."
He smiled almost sheepishly. Sara Lee, who had no subtlety but a great
deal of intuition, felt that there was a certain relief in the smile, as
though Jean, having had no message from his master, was pleased that
she had none. Which was true enough, at that. Also she felt that Jean's
one eye was inspecting her closely, which was also true. A new factor
had come into Henri's life--by Jean's reasoning, a new and dangerous
one. And there were dangers enough already.
Highly dangerous, Jean reflected in the back of his head as he backed
out with a bow. A young girl unafraid of the morning sun and sitting
at a little breakfast table as fresh as herself--that was a picture for
a war-weary man.
Jean forgot for a moment his anxiety for Henri's safety in his fear for
his peace of mind. For a doubt had been removed. The girl was straight.
Jean's one sophisticated eye had grasped that at once. A good girl,
alone, and far from home! And Henri, like all soldiers, woman-hungry
for good women, for unpainted skins and clear eyes and the freshness and
bloom of youth.
All there, behind that little breakfast table which might so pleasantly
have been laid for two.
Jean took a walk that morning, and stood staring for twenty minutes into
a clock maker's window, full of clocks. After which he drew out his
watch and looked at the time!
At two in the afternoon Sara Lee saw Henri's car come into the square.
It was, if possible, more dilapidated than before, and he came like a
gray whirlwind, scattering people and dogs out of his way. Almost
before he had had time to enter the hotel Sara Lee heard him in the
hall, and the next moment he was bowing before her.
"I have been longer than I expected," he explained. "Have you been
quite comfortable?"
Sara Lee, however, was gazing at him with startled eyes. He was dirty,
unshaven, and his eyes looked hollow and bloodshot. From his neck to
his heels he was smeared with mud, and his tidy tunic was torn into
ragged holes.