too late to undo what the madness
had done.

Then one day a strange thing happened. It had been raining, and when in
the late afternoon the sun came out it gleamed in the puddles that filled
the shell holes in the road and set to a red blaze the windows of the
house of the mill.

First, soaring overhead, came a half dozen friendly planes. Next, the
eyes of the enemy having thus been blinded, so to speak, there came a
regiment of fresh troops, swinging down the street for all the world as
though the German Army was safely drinking beer in Munich. They passed
Rene, standing open-mouthed in the doorway, and one wag of a Belgian boy,
out of sheer joy of spring, did the goose step as he passed the little
sentry and, head screwed round in the German salute, crossed his eyes
over his impudent nose.

Came, then, the planes. Came the regiment, which turned off into a field
and there spread itself, like a snake uncoiling, into a double line.
Came a machine, gray and battered, containing officers. Came a general
with gold braid on his shoulder, and a pleasant smile. Came the strange
event.

The general found Sara Lee in the _salle a manger_ cutting cotton into
three-inch squares, and he stood in the doorway and bowed profoundly.

"Mademoiselle Kennedy?" he inquired.

Sara Lee replied to that, and then gave a quick thought to her larder.
Because generals usually meant tea. But this time at last, Sara Lee was
to receive something, not to give. She turned very white when she was
told, and said she had not deserved it; she was indeed on the verge of
declining, not knowing that there are certain things one does not
decline. But Marie brought her hat and jacket--a smiling, tremulous
Marie--and Sara Lee put them on.

The general was very tall. In her short skirt and with flying hair she
looked like a child beside him as they walked across the fields.
Suddenly Sara Lee was terribly afraid she was going to cry.

The troops stood rigidly at attention. And a cold wind flapped Sara
Lee's skirts, and the guns hammered at Ypres, and the general blew on
his fingers. And soon a low open car came down the street and the
King got out. Sara Lee watched him coming--his tall, slightly stooped
figure, his fair hair, his plain blue uniform. Sara Lee had never seen
a king before, and she had always thought of them as sitting up on a
sort of platform--never as trudging through spring mud.

"What shall I do?" she asked nervously.

"He will sha