stared at Henri in blank dismay.

"No trains!" she said blankly. "Would an automobile be very expensive?"

"They are all under government control, mademoiselle. Even the petrol."

She stopped in the street.

"Then I shall have to go back."

Henri laughed boyishly.

"Mademoiselle," he said, "I have been requested to take you to a place
where you may render us the service we so badly need. For the present
that is my duty, and nothing else. So if you will accept the offer of
my car, which is a shameful one but travels well, we can continue our
journey."

Long, long afterward, Sara Lee found a snapshot of Henri's car, taken
by a light-hearted British officer. Found it and sat for a long time
with it in her hand, thinking and remembering that first day she saw it,
in the sun at Calais. A long low car it was, once green, but now
roughly painted gray. But it was not the crude painting, significant
as it was, that brought so close the thing she was going to. It was
that the car was but a shell of a car. The mud guards were crumpled up
against the side. Body and hood were pitted with shrapnel. A door had
been shot away, and the wind shield was but a frame set round with
broken glass. Even the soldier-chauffeur wore a patch over one eye,
and his uniform was ragged.