Now and then there was one, of course, who lagged behind his fellows,
with a yearning tenderness in his face that a glance from the girl would
have quickly turned to love. But Sara Lee had no coquetry. When, as
occasionally happened, there was a bit too much fervor when her hand was
kissed, she laid it where it belonged--to loneliness and the spring--and
became extremely maternal and very, very kind. Which--both of them--are
death blows to young love.
The winter floods were receding. Along the Yser Canal mud-caked flats
began to appear, with here and there rusty tangles of barbed wire. And
with the lessening of the flood came new activities to the little house.
The spring drive was coming.
There was spring indeed, everywhere but in Henri's heart.
Day after day messages were left with Sara Lee by men in
uniform--sometimes letters, sometimes a word. And these she faithfully
cared for until such time as Jean came for them. Now and then it was
Henri who came, but when he stayed in the village he made his
headquarters at the house of the mill. There, with sacking over the
windows, he wrote his reports by lamplight, reports which Jean carried
back to the villa in the fishing village by the sea.
However, though he no longer came and went as before, Henri made frequent
calls at the house of mercy. But now he came in the evenings, when the
place was full of men. Sara Lee was doing more dressings than before.
The semi-armistice of winter was over, and there were nights when a row
of wounded men lay on the floor in the little salle a manger and waited,
in a sort of dreadful quiet, to be taken away.
Rumors came of hard fighting farther along the line, and sometimes, on
nights when the clouds hung low, the flashes of the guns at Ypres looked
like incessant lightning. From the sand dunes at Nieuport and Dixmude
there was firing also, and the air seemed sometimes to be full of
scouting planes.
The Canadians were moving toward the Front at Neuve Chapelle at that
time. And one day a lorry, piled high with boxes, rolled and thumped
down the street, and halted by Rene.
"Rather think we are lost," explained the driver, grinning sheepishly
at Rene.
There were four boys in khaki on the truck, and not a word of French
among them. Sara Lee, who rolled her own bandages now, heard the
speech and came out.
"Good gracious!" she said, and gave an alarmed glance at the sky. But
it was the noon hour, when every good German abandons war for food, and
the sky was empty.