smiling Frenchwoman showed her to her room. She felt like an island of
silence in a rapid-rolling sea of French. The Frenchwoman threw open
the door.

A great room with high curtained windows; a huge bed with a faded gilt
canopy and heavy draperies; a wardrobe as vast as the bed; and for a
toilet table an enormous mirror reaching to the ceiling and with a
marble shelf below--that was her room.

"I think you will be comfortable here, mademoiselle."

Sara Lee, who still clutched her small bag of gold, shook her head.

"Comfortable, yes," she said. "But I am afraid it is very expensive."

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