Henri named an extremely low figure—­an exact fourth, to be accurate, of its real cost.  A surprising person Henri, with his worn uniform and his capacity for kindly mendacity.  And seeing something in the Frenchwoman’s face that perhaps he had expected, he turned to her almost fiercely: 

“You are to understand, madame, that this lady has been placed in my care by authority that will not be questioned.  She is to have every deference.”

That was all, but was enough.  And from that time on Sara Lee Kennedy, of Ohio, was called, in the tiny box downstairs which constituted the office, “Mademoiselle La Princesse.”

Henri did a characteristic and kindly thing for Sara Lee before he left that evening on one of the many mysterious journeys that he was to make during the time Sara Lee knew him.  He came to her door, menus in hand, and painstakingly ordered for her a dinner for that night, and the three meals for the day following.

He made no suggestion of dining with her that evening.  Indeed, watching him from her small table, Sara Lee decided that he had put her entirely out of his mind.  He did not so much as glance at her.  Save the cashier at her boxed-in desk and money drawer, she was the only woman in that room full of officers.  Quite certainly Henri was the only man who did not find some excuse for glancing in her direction.

But finishing early, he paused by the cashier’s desk to pay for his meal, and then he gave Sara Lee the stiffest and most ceremonious of bows.

She felt hurt.  Alone in her great room, the curtains drawn by order of the police, lest a ray of light betray the town to eyes in the air, she went carefully over the hours she had spent with Henri that day, looking for a cause of offense.  She must have hurt him or he would surely have stopped to speak to her.

Perhaps already he was finding her a burden.  She flushed with shame when she remembered about the meals he had had to order for her, and she sat up in her great bed until late, studying by candlelight such phrases as: 

“Il y a une erreur dans la note,” and “Garcon, quels fruits avez-vous?”

She tried to write to Harvey that night, but she gave it up at last.  There was too much he would not understand.  She could not write frankly without telling of Henri, and to this point everything had centered about Henri.  It all rather worried her, because there was nothing she was ashamed of, nothing she should have had to conceal.  She had yet to learn, had Sara Lee, that many of the concealments of life are based not on wrongdoing but on fear of misunderstanding.

So she got as far as:  “Dearest Harvey:  I am here in a hotel at Dunkirk” —­and then stopped, fairly engulfed in a wave of homesickness.  Not so much for Harvey as for familiar things—­Uncle James in his chair by the fire, with the phonograph playing “My Little Gray Home in the West”; her own white bedroom; the sun on the red geraniums in the dining-room window; the voices of happy children wandering home from school.