Jean was smiling when they passed on. What a story would this slip of a
girl take home with her!
But: "I don't think I want a medal, Jean," she said. "I didn't come for
that. And after all it is you and Henri who have done the thing--not I."
Accustomed to women of a more sophisticated class, Jean had at first
taken her naivete for the height of subtlety. He was always expecting
her to betray herself. But after that evening with her he changed. Just
such simplicity had been his wife's. Sometimes Sara Lee reminded him of
her--the upraising of her eyes or an unstudied gesture.
He sighed.
"You are very wonderful, you Americans," he said. It was the nearest to
a compliment that he had ever come. And after that evening he was always
very gentle with her. Once he had protected her because Henri had asked
him to do so; now he himself became in his silent way her protector.
The ride home through the dark was very quiet. Sara Lee sat beside him
watching the stars and growing increasingly anxious as they went, not
too rapidly, toward the little house. There were no lights. Air raids
had grown common in Dunkirk, and there were no street lights in the
little city. Once on the highway Jean lighted the lamps, but left them
very low, and two miles from the little house he put them out altogether.
They traveled by starlight then, following as best they could the tall
trees that marked the road. Now and then they went astray at that, and
once they tilted into the ditch and had hard pulling to get out.
At the top of the street Jean stopped and went on foot a little way down.
He came back, with the report that new shells had made the way impassable;
and again Sara Lee shivered. If the little house was gone!
But it was there, and lighted too. Through its broken shutters came the
yellow glow of the oil lamp that now hung over the table in the salle a
manger.
Whatever Jean's anxieties had been fell from him as he pushed open the
door. Henri's voice was the first thing they heard. He was too much
occupied to notice their approach.
So it was that Sara Lee saw, for the last time, the miller and his son,
Maurice; saw them, but did not know them, for over their heads were bags
of their own sacking, with eyeholes roughly cut in them. Their hands
were bound, and three soldiers were waiting to take them away.