Late in October Sara Lee went back to the little house of mercy; went
unaccredited, and with her own money. She had sold her bit of property.
In London she went to the Traverses, as before. But with a difference
too. For Sara Lee had learned the strangeness of the English, who are
slow to friendships but who never forget. Indeed a telegram met her at
Liverpool asking her to stop with them in London. She replied, refusing,
but thanking them, and saying she would call the next afternoon.
Everything was the same at Morley's: Rather a larger percentage of men
in uniform, perhaps; greater crowds in the square; a little less of the
optimism which in the spring had predicted victory before autumn. But
the same high courage, for all that.
August greeted her like an old friend. Even the waiters bowed to her,
and upstairs the elderly chambermaid fussed over her like a mother.
"And you're going back!" she exclaimed. "Fancy that, now! You are
brave, miss."
But her keen eyes saw a change in Sara Lee. Her smile was the same, but
there were times when she forgot to finish a sentence, and she stood,
that first morning, for an hour by the window, looking out as if she saw
nothing.
She went, before the visit to the Traverses, to the Church of Saint
Martin in the Fields. It was empty, save for a woman in a corner, who
did not kneel, but sat staring quietly before her. Sara Lee prayed an
inarticulate bit of a prayer, that what the Traverses would have to tell
her should not be the thing that she feared, but that, if it were, she
be given courage to meet it and to go on with her work.
The Traverses would know; Mrs. Cameron was a friend. They would know
about Henri, and about Jean. Soon, within the hour, she would learn
everything. So she asked for strength, and then sat there for a time,
letting the peace of the old church quiet her, as had the broken walls
and shattered altar of that other church, across the channel.
It was rather a surprise to Sara Lee to have Mrs. Travers put her arms
about her and kiss her. Mr. Travers, too, patted her hand when he took
it. But they had, for all that, the reserve of their class. Much that
they felt about Sara Lee they did not express even to each other.
"We are so grateful to you," Mrs. Travers said. "I am only one mother,
and of course now--" She looked down at her black dress. "But how many
others there are who will want to thank you, when this terrible thing is
over and they learn about you!"