But it was she who was silent after that, because somehow it would be hard to make Harvey understand. And as for his being grateful--
"Mademoiselle," said Henri later on, "would you object if I make a suggestion? You wear a very valuable ring. I think it is entirely safe, but--who can tell? And also it is not entirely kind to remind men who are far from all they love that you--"
"I am glad you told me," she said. And Henri did not explain that the Belgian soldiers would not recognize the ring as either a diamond or a symbol, but that to him it was close to torture.
It was when he insisted on carrying out the dishes, singing a little French song as he did so, that Sara Lee decided to speak what was in her mind. He was in high spirits then.
"Mademoiselle," he said, "shall I show you something that the eye of no man has seen before, and that, when we have seen it, shall never be seen again?"
On her interested consent he called in Marie and René, making a great ceremony of the matter, and sending Marie into hysterical giggling.
"Now see!" he said earnestly. "No eye before has ever seen or will again. Will you guess, mademoiselle? Or you, Marie? René?"
He did not, indeed. He stood, tall and young and smiling before them, and produced from his pocket the walnut.
"Perceive!" he said, breaking it open and showing the kernel. "Has human eye ever before seen it?" He thrust it into Marie's open mouth. "And it is gone! _Voilà tout_!"
It was that evening, while Sara Lee cut bandages and Henri rolled them, that she asked him what his work was. He looked rather surprised, and rolled for a moment without replying. Then: "I am a man of all work," he said. "What you call odd jobs."
"In the trenches--no. But now and then I have a little skirmish."
A sort of fear had been formulating itself in Sara Lee's mind. The trenches she could understand or was beginning to understand. But this alternately joyous and silent idler, this soldier of no regiment and no detail--was he playing a man's part in the war?
"Why don't you go into the trenches?" she asked with her usual directness. "You say there are too few men. Yet--I can understand Monsieur Jean, because he has only one eye. But you!"
"I do something," he said, avoiding her eyes. "It is not a great deal. It is the thing I can do best. That is all."