Only Henri and Rene remained on the street floor. Henri was
extinguishing lights. In the passage Rene stood, not willing to take
refuge until Henri, whom he adored, had done so. For a moment the
uproar ceased, and in a spirit of bravado Rene stepped out into the
moonlight and made a gesture of derision into the air.
He fell there, struck by a piece of splintered shell.
"Come, Rene!" Henri called. "The brave are those who live to fight
again, not--"
But Rene's figure against the moonlight was gone. Henri ran to the
doorway then and found him lying, his head on the little step where he
had been wont to sit and whittle and sing his Tipperaree. He was dead.
Henri carried him in and laid him in the little passage, very reverently.
Then he went below.
"Where is Rene?" Sara Lee asked from the darkness.
"A foolish boy," said Henri, a catch in his throat. "He is, I think,
watching these fiends of the air, from some shelter."
"There is no shelter," shivered the girl.
He groped for her hand in the darkness, and so they stood, hand in hand,
like two children, waiting for what might come.
It was not until the thing was over that he told her.
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