Part 38

"The Russian ballet, Jean!" he said, and capering madly sent Jean into deep grumbles of laughter by his burlesque.

"I must have exercise," Henri said at last when, breathless and with flying hair, he began to dress. "That, too, is my English schooling. If you, Jean--"

"To the devil with your English schooling!" Jean remonstrated.

Henri sobered quickly after that. The exhilaration of his cold plunge was over.

"The American lady?" he asked. "She is all right?"

"She is worried. There is not enough money."

Henri frowned.

"And I have nothing!"

This opened up an old wound with Jean.

"If you would be practical and take pay for what you are doing," he began.

Henri cut him short.

"Pay!" he said. "What is there to pay me with? And what is the use of reopening the matter? A man may be a spy for love of his country. God knows there is enough lying and deceit in the business. But to be a spy for money--never!"

There was a little silence. Then: "Now for mademoiselle," said Henri. "She must be out of the village to-night. And that, dear friend, must be your affair. She does not like me."

All the life had gone out of his voice.

"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?"