But
the same high courage, for all that.
August greeted her like an old friend. Even the waiters bowed to her,
and upstairs the elderly chambermaid fussed over her like a mother.
"And you're going back!" she exclaimed. "Fancy that, now! You are
brave, miss."
But her keen eyes saw a change in Sara Lee. Her smile was the same, but
there were times when she forgot to finish a sentence, and she stood,
that first morning, for an hour by the window, looking out as if she saw
nothing.
She went, before the visit to the Traverses, to the Church of Saint
Martin in the Fields. It was empty, save for a woman in a corner, who
did not kneel, but sat staring quietly before her. Sara Lee prayed an
inarticulate bit of a prayer, that what the Traverses would have to tell
her should not be the thing that she feared, but that, if it were, she
be given courage to meet it and to go on with her work.
The Traverses would know; Mrs. Cameron was a friend. They would know
about Henri, and about Jean. Soon, within the hour, she would learn
everything. So she asked for strength, and then sat there for a time,
letting the peace of the old church quiet her, as had the broken walls
and shattered altar of that other church, across the channel.
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