t to perhaps a thousand men. You--alone!"

"I--alone!" she said in a queer choking voice. "And what about you?
It is you who have made it possible."

But Henri was looking down the street to where the row of poplars hid
what lay beyond. Far beyond a star shell had risen above the flat
fields and floated there, a pure and lovely thing, shedding its white
light over the terrain below. It gleamed for some thirty seconds and
went out.

"Like that!" Henri said to her, but in French. "Like that you are to me.
Bright and shining--and so soon gone."

Sara Lee thought he had asked her if she was cold.

XI

The girl was singularly adaptable. In a few days it was as though she
had been for years in her little ruined house. She was very happy,
though there was scarcely a day when her heart was not wrung. Such
young-old faces! Such weary men! And such tales of wretchedness!

She got the tales by intuition rather than by words, though she was
picking up some French at that. Marie would weep openly, at times. The
most frequent story was of no news from the country held by the Germans,
of families left with nothing and probably starving. The first inquiry
was always for news. Had the American lady any way to make inquiry?

In time Sara Lee began to take notes of names and addresses, and through
Mr. Travers, in London, and the Relief Commission, in Belgium, bits of
information came back. A certain family was in England at a village in
Surrey. Of another a child had died. Here was one that could not be
located, and another reported massacred during the invasion.

Later on Sara Lee was to find her little house growing famous, besieged
by anxious soldiers who besought her efforts, so that she used enormous
numbers of stamps and a great deal of effort. But that was later on.
And when that time came she turned to the work as a refuge from her
thoughts. For days were coming when Sara Lee did not want to think.

But like all big things the little house made a humble beginning. A mere
handful of men, daring the gibes of their comrades, stopped in that first
night the door stood open, with its invitation of firelight and candles.
But these few went away with a strange story--of a beautiful American,
and hot soup, and even a cigarette apiece. That had been Henri's
contribution, the cigarettes. And soon the fame of the little house went
up and down the trenches, and it was like to die of overpopularity.

It was at night that th