day she saw it,
in the sun at Calais. A long low car it was, once green, but now
roughly painted gray. But it was not the crude painting, significant
as it was, that brought so close the thing she was going to. It was
that the car was but a shell of a car. The mud guards were crumpled up
against the side. Body and hood were pitted with shrapnel. A door had
been shot away, and the wind shield was but a frame set round with
broken glass. Even the soldier-chauffeur wore a patch over one eye,
and his uniform was ragged.

"Not a beautiful car, mademoiselle, as I warned you! But a fast one!"

Henri was having a double enjoyment. He was watching Sara Lee's face
and his chauffeur's remaining eye.

"But fast; eh, Jean?" he said to the chauffeur. The man nodded and
said something in French. It was probably the thing Henri had hoped for,
and he threw back his head and laughed.

"Jean is reminding me," he said gayly, "that it is forbidden to officers
to take a lady along the road that we shall travel." But when he saw
how Sara Lee flushed he turned to the man.

"Mademoiselle has come from America to help us, Jean," he said quietly.
"And now for Dunkirk."

The road from Dunkirk to Calais was well guarded in those days. From
Nieuport for some miles inland only the shattered remnant of the Belgian
Army held the line. For the cry "On to Paris!" the Germans had
substituted "On to Calais!"

So, on French soil at least, the road was well guarded. A few miles in
the battered car, then a slowing up, a showing of passports, the clatter
of a great chain as it dropped to the road, a lowering of leveled rifles,
and a salute from the officer--that was the method by which they
advanced.

Henri sat with the driver and talked in a low tone. Sometimes he sat
quiet, looking ahead. He seemed, somehow, older, more careworn. His
boyishness had gone. Now and then he turned to ask if she was
comfortable, but in the intervals she felt that he had entirely forgotten
her. Once, at something Jean said, he got out a pocket map and went
over it carefully. It was a long time after that before he turned to
see if she was all right.

Sara Lee sat forward and watched everything. She saw little evidence of
war, beyond the occasional sentries and chains. Women were walking along
the roads. Children stopped and pointed, smiling, at the battered car.
One very small boy saluted, and Henri as gravely returned the salute.

Some time after that he turned to he