o; but not much," he replied. Though his French had been rapid he
spoke English slowly. "How can we serve you, mademoiselle?"

"I don't want any assistance. I--I want to help, if I can."

"Here?"

"In France. Or Belgium."

He shrugged his shoulders.

"We have many offers of help. What we need, mademoiselle, is not
workers. We have, at our base hospital, already many English nurses."

"I am not a nurse."

"I am sorry. The whole world is sorry for Belgium, and many would work.
What we need"--he shrugged his shoulders again--"is food, clothing,
supplies for our brave little soldiers."

Sara Lee looked extremely small and young. The Belgian sat down on a
chair and surveyed her carefully.

"You English are doing a--a fine work for us," he observed. "We are
grateful. But of course the"--he hesitated--"the pulling up of an
entire people--it is colossal."

"But I am not English," said Sara Lee. "And I have a little money. I
want to make soup for your wounded men at a railway station or--any
place. I can make good soup. And I shall have money each month to buy
what I need."

Only then was Sara Lee admitted to the crowded little room.

Long afterward, when the lights behind the back drop had gone down and
Sara Lee was back again in her familiar setting, one of the clearest
pictures she retained of that amazing interlude was of that crowded
little room in the Savoy, its single littered desk, its two typewriters
creating an incredible din, a large gentleman in a dark-blue military
cape seeming to fill the room. And in corners and off stage, so to
speak, perhaps a half dozen men, watching her curiously.

The conversation was in French, and Sara Lee's acquaintance of the
passage acted as interpreter. It was only when Sara Lee found that a
considerable discussion was going on in which she had no part that she
looked round and saw her friend of two nights before and of the little
donkey. He was watching her intently, and when he caught her eye
he bowed.

Now men, in Sara Lee's mind, had until now been divided into the ones at
home, one's own kind, the sort who married one's friends or oneself, the
kind who called their wives "mother" after the first baby came, and were
easily understood, plain men, decent and God-fearing and self-respecting;
and the men of that world outside America, who were foreigners. One
might like foreigners, but they were outsiders.

So there was no self-consciousness in Sara Lee's bow and smil