There was the business of checking them off, and the further business
of Sara Lee's paying for them in gold. She sat at the table, Jean
across, and struggled with centimes and francs and louis d'or, an
engrossed frown between her eyebrows.
Jean, sitting across, thought her rather changed. She smiled very seldom,
and her eyes were perhaps more steady. It was a young girl he and Henri
had brought out to the little house. It was a very serious and rather
anxious young woman who sat across from him and piled up the money he
had brought back into little stacks.
"Jean," she said finally, "I am not going to be able to do it."
"To do what?"
"To continue--here."
"No?"
"You see I had a little money of my own, and twenty pounds I got in
London. You and--and Henri have done miracles for me. But soon I
shall have used all my own money, except enough to take me back. And
now I shall have to start on my English notes. After that--"
"You are too good to the men. These cigarettes, now--you could do
without them."
"But they are very cheap, and they mean so much, Jean."
She sat still, her hands before her on the table. From the kitchen came
the bubbling of the eternal soup. Suddenly a tear rolled slowly down
her cheek. She had a hatred of crying in public, but Jean apparently
did not notice.
"The trouble, mademoiselle, is that you are trying to feed and comfort
too many."
"Jean," she said suddenly, "where is Henri?"
"In England, I think."
The only clear thought in Sara Lee's mind was that Henri was not in
France, and that he had gone without telling her. She had hurt him
horribly. She knew that. He might never come back to the little house
of mercy. There was, in Henri, for all his joyousness, an implacable
strain. And she had attacked his honor. What possible right had she
to do that?
The memory of all his thoughtful kindness came back, and it was a pale
and distracted Sara Lee who looked across the table at Jean.
"Did he tell you anything?"
"Nothing, mademoiselle."
"He is very angry with me, Jean."
"But surely no, mademoiselle. With you? It is impossible."
But though they said nothing more, Jean considered the matter deeply.
He understood now, for instance, a certain strangeness in Henri's manner
before his departure. They had quarreled, these two. Perhaps it was as
well, though Jean was by now a convert to Sara Lee. But he looked out,
those days, on but half a world, did Jean. So he saw only the woman
hunger in Henri, and nothing deeper. And in Sara Lee a woman, and
nothing more.