"But why should I go?" Sara Lee asked. "It is kind of you to ask me,
Jean. But I am here to work, not to play."
Long ago Sara Lee had abandoned her idea of Jean as a paid chauffeur.
She even surmised, from something Marie had said, that he had been a
person of importance in the Belgium of before the war. So she was
grateful, but inclined to be obstinate.
"You have been so much alone, mademoiselle--"
"Alone!"
"Cut off from your own kind. And now and then one finds, at the hotel
in Dunkirk, some English nurses who are having a holiday. You would
like to talk to them perhaps."
"Jean," she said unexpectedly, "why don't you tell me the truth? You
want me to leave the village to-night. Why?"
"Because, mademoiselle, there will be a bombardment."
"The village itself?"
"We expect it," he answered dryly.
Sara Lee went a little pale.
"But then I shall be needed, as I was before."
"No troops will pass through the town to-night. They will take a road
beyond the fields."
"How do you know these things?" she asked, wondering. "About the troops
I can understand. But the bombardment."
"There are ways of finding out, mademoiselle," he replied in his
noncommittal voice. "Now, will you go?"
"May I tell Marie and Rene?"
"No."
"Then I shall not go. How can you think that I would consider my own
safety and leave them here?"
Jean had ascertained before speaking that Marie was not in the house.
As for Rene, he sat on the single doorstep and whittled pegs on which to
hang his rifle inside the door. And as he carved he sang words of his
own to the tune of Tipperary.
Inside the little salle a manger Jean reassured Sara Lee. It was
important--vital--that Rene and Marie should not know far in advance
of the bombardment. They were loyal, certainly, but these were his
orders. In abundance of time they would be warned to leave the village.
"Who is to warn them?"
"Henri has promised, mademoiselle. And what he promises is done."
"You said this morning that he was in England."
"He has returned."
Sara Lee's heart, which had been going along merely as a matter of duty
all day, suddenly began to beat faster. Her color came up, and then faded
again. He had returned, and he had not come to the little house. But
then--what could Henri mean to her, his coming or his going? Was she
to add to her other sins against Harvey the supreme one of being
interested in Henri?