I shall always love you, Sara Lee. I guess I'm that sort. But sometimes
I wonder if, when we are married, you will leave me again in some such
uncalled-for way. I warn you now, dear, that I won't stand for it. I'm
suffering too much.
HARVEY.
Sara Lee wore the letter next her heart, but it did not warm her. She
went through the next few hours in a sort of frozen composure and ate
nothing at all.
Then came the bombardment.
Henri and Jean, driving out from Dunkirk, had passed on the road
ammunition trains, waiting in the road until dark before moving on to
the Front. Henri had given Sara Lee her letter, had watched jealously
for its effect on her, and then, his own face white and set, had gone on
down the ruined street.
Here within the walls of a destroyed house he disappeared. The place
was evidently familiar to him, for he moved without hesitation. Broken
furniture still stood in the roofless rooms, and in front of a battered
bureau Henri paused. Still whistling under his breath, he took off his
uniform and donned a strange one, of greenish gray. In the pocket of
the blouse he stuffed a soft round cap of the same color. Then, resuming
his cape and Belgian cap, with its tassel over his forehead, he went out
into the street again. He carried in his belt a pistol, but it was not
the one he had brought in with him. As a matter of fact, by the addition
of the cap in his pocket, Henri was at that moment in the full uniform of
a lieutenant of a Bavarian infantry regiment, pistol and all.
He went down the street and along the road toward the poplars. He met
the first detachment of men out of the trenches just beyond the trees,
and stepped aside into the mud to let them pass, calling a greeting to
them out of the darkness.
"Bonsoir!" they replied, and saluted stiffly. There were few among them
who did not know his voice, and fewer still who did not suspect his
business.
"A brave man," they said among themselves as they went on.
"How long will he last?" asked one young soldier, a boy in his teens.
"One cannot live long who does as he does," replied a gaunt and bearded
man. "But it is a fine life while it continues. A fine life!"
The boy stepped out of the shuffling line and looked behind him. He
could see only the glow of Henri's eternal cigarette. "I should like to
go with him," he muttered wistfully.