r.

"I find that I shall have to leave you in Dunkirk," he said. "A matter
of a day only, probably. But I will see before I go that you are
comfortable."

"I shall be quite all right, of course."

But something had gone out of the day for her.

Sara Lee learned one thing that day, learned it as some women do learn,
by the glance of an eye, the tone of a voice. The chauffeur adored
Henri. His one unbandaged eye stole moments from the road to glance
at him. When he spoke, while Henri read his map, his very voice betrayed
him. And while she pondered the thing, woman-fashion they drew into
the square of Dunkirk, where the statue of Jean Bart, pirate and
privateer stared down at this new procession of war which passed daily
and nightly under his cold eyes.

Jean and a porter carried in her luggage. Henri and a voluble and
smiling Frenchwoman showed her to her room. She felt like an island of
silence in a rapid-rolling sea of French. The Frenchwoman threw open
the door.

A great room with high curtained windows; a huge bed with a faded gilt
canopy and heavy draperies; a wardrobe as vast as the bed; and for a
toilet table an enormous mirror reaching to the ceiling and with a
marble shelf below--that was her room.

"I think you will be comfortable here, mademoiselle."

Sara Lee, who still clutched her small bag of gold, shook her head.

"Comfortable, yes," she said. "But I am afraid it is very expensive."

Henri named an extremely low figure--an exact fourth, to be accurate,
of its real cost. A surprising person Henri, with his worn uniform and
his capacity for kindly mendacity. And seeing something in the
Frenchwoman's face that perhaps he had expected, he turned to her
almost fiercely:

"You are to understand, madame, that this lady has been placed in my
care by authority that will not be questioned. She is to have every
deference."

That was all, but was enough. And from that time on Sara Lee Kennedy,
of Ohio, was called, in the tiny box downstairs which constituted the
office, "Mademoiselle La Princesse."

Henri did a characteristic and kindly thing for Sara Lee before he left
that evening on one of the many mysterious journeys that he was to make
during the time Sara Lee knew him. He came to her door, menus in hand,
and painstakingly ordered for her a dinner for that night, and the
three meals for the day following.

He made no suggestion of dining with her that evening. Indeed, watching
him from her sma