Sometimes, from her window, she saw the market people below, in their
striped red-and-white booths, staring up at the sky. She would look up,
too, and there would be an aëroplane sliding along, sometimes so low
that one could hear the faint report of the exhaust.

But it was the ambulances that Sara Lee looked for. Mostly they came
at night, a steady stream of them. Sometimes they moved rapidly.
Again, one would be going very slowly, and other machines would circle
impatiently round it and go on. A silent, grim procession in the
moonlight it was, and it helped the girl to bear the solitude of those
two interminable days.

Inside those long gray cars with the red crosses painted on the tops--a
symbol of mercy that had ceased to protect--inside those cars were
wounded men, men who had perhaps lain for hours without food or care.
Surely, surely it was right that she had come. The little she could do
must count in the great total. She twisted Harvey's ring on her finger
and sent a little message to him.

"You will forgive me when you know, dear," was the message. "It is so
terrible! So pitiful!"

Yet during the day the square was gay enough. Officers in spurs clanked
across, wide capes blowing in the wind. Common soldiers bought fruit
and paper bags of fried potatoes from the booths. Countless dogs fought
under the feet of passers-by, and over all leered the sardonic face of
Jean Bart, pirate and privateer.

Sara Lee went out daily, but never far. And she practiced French with