Part 20

"Now, please tell me," he said. "I have been most uneasy. On the quay last night you looked--frightened."

"I was awfully frightened. Nothing happened. I even slept."

"You were very brave."

"I was very seasick."

"I am sorry."

Henri took a turn up and down the room.

"But," said Sara Lee slowly, "I--I--can't be on your hands, you know. You must have many things to do. If you are going to have to order my meals and all that, I'm going to be a dreadful burden."

"But you will learn very quickly."

"I'm stupid about languages."

Henri dismissed that with a gesture. She could not, he felt, be stupid about anything. He went to the window and looked out. The destroyers were still coaling, and a small cargo was being taken off the boat at the quay. The rain was over, and in the early sunlight an officer in blue tunic, red breeches and black cavalry boots was taking the air, his head bent over his chest. Not a detail of the scene escaped him.

"I have agreed to find the right place for you," he said thoughtfully. "There is one, but I think--" He hesitated. "I do not wish to place you again in danger."

"You mean that it is near the Front?"

"Very near, mademoiselle."

"But I should be rather near, to be useful."

"Perhaps, for your work. But what of you? These brutes--they shell far and wide. One can never be sure."

He paused and surveyed her whimsically.

"Who allowed you to come, alone, like this?" he demanded. "Is there no one who objected?"

Sara Lee glanced down at her ring.

"The man I am going to marry. He is very angry."

Henri looked at her, and followed her eyes to Harvey's ring. He said nothing, however, but he went over and gave the bell cord a violent jerk.

"You must have food quickly," he said in a rather flat voice. "You are looking tired and pale."

A sense of unreality was growing on Sara Lee. That she should be alone in France with a man she had never seen three days before; that she knew nothing whatever about that man; that, for the present at least, she was utterly and absolutely dependent on him, even for the food she ate--it was all of a piece with the night's voyage and the little room at the Savoy. And it was none of it real.

When the breakfast tray came Henri was again at the window and silent. And Sara Lee saw that it was laid for two. She was a little startled, but the businesslike way in which the young officer drew up two chairs and held one out for her made protest seem absurd. And the flat-faced boy, who waited, looked unshocked and uninterested.

It was not until she had had some coffee that Henri followed up his line of thought.

"So--the fiance did not approve? It is not difficult to understand. There is always danger, for there are German aëroplanes even in remote places. And you are very young. You still wish to establish yourself, mademoiselle?"

"Of course!"

"Would it be a comfort to cable your safe arrival in France to the fiancé?" When he saw her face he smiled. And if it was a rather heroic smile it was none the less friendly. "I see. What shall I say? Or will you write it?"

So Sara Lee, vastly cheered by two cups of coffee, an egg, and a very considerable portion of bread and butter, wrote her cable. It was to be brief, for cables cost money. It said, "Safe. Well. Love." And Henri, who seemed to have strange and ominous powers, sent it almost immediately. Total cost, as reported to Sara Lee, two francs. He took the money she offered him gravely.