Long before that Sara Lee had learned not to question Jean about Henri's
absences. Even his knowledge, now, that she knew something of Henri's
work, did not remove the barrier. So Sara Lee waited, as did Jean, but
more helplessly. She knew something was wrong, but she had not Jean's
privilege of going at night to the trenches and there waiting, staring
over the gray water with its ugly floating shadows, for Henri to emerge
from the flood.
Something rather forced and mechanical there was those days in her work.
Her smile was rather set. She did not sleep well. And one night she
violated Henri's orders and walked across the softened fields to beyond
the poplar trees.
There was nothing to see except an intermittent flash from the clouds
that hung low over the sea at Nieuport, where British gunboats were
bombarding the coast; or the steady streaks from the Ypres salient, where
night and day the guns never rested.
From the Belgian trenches, fifteen hundred feet or so away, there was no
sound. A German electric signal blazed its message in code, and went out
quickly. Now and then a rifle shot, thin and sharp, rang out from where,
under the floating starlights, keen eyes on each side watched for
movements on the other.
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