Henri threw open a door on the right.
"Your bedroom," he said. "Well furnished, as you will see. It should
be, since there has been brought here all the furniture not destroyed
in the village."
His blacker mood had fallen away before her naive delight. He went
about smiling boyishly, showing her the kettles in the kitchen; the
supply, already so rare, of firewood; the little stove. But he stiffened
somewhat when she placed her hand rather timidly on his arm.
"How am I ever to thank you?" she asked.
"By doing much good. And by never going beyond the poplar trees."
She promised both very earnestly.
But she was a little sad as she followed Henri about, he volubly
expatiating on such advantages as plenty of air owing to the absence of
a roof; and the attraction of the stove, which he showed much like a
salesman anxious to make a sale. "Such a stove!" he finished
contentedly. "It will make soup even in your absence, mademoiselle!
Our peasants eat much soup; therefore it is what you would call a
trained stove."
Before Sara Lee's eyes came a picture of Harvey and the Leete house,
its white dining room, its bay window for plants, its comfortable charm
and prettiness. And Harvey's face, as he planned it for her anxious,
pleading, loving. She drew a long breath. If Henri noticed her
abstraction he ignored it. He was all over the little house. One moment
he was instructing Marie volubly, to her evident confusion. On Rene,
the guard, he descended like a young cyclone, with warnings for
mademoiselle's safety and comfort. He was everywhere, sitting on the
bed to see if it was soft, tramping hard on the upper floor to discover
if any plaster might loosen below, and pausing in that process to look
keenly at a windmill in the field behind.
When he came down it was to say: "You are not entirely alone in the
village, after all, mademoiselle. The miller has come back. I shall
visit him now and explain."
He found Sara Lee, however, still depressed. She was sitting in a low
chair in the kitchen gazing thoughtfully at the stove.
"I am here," she said. "And here is the house, and a stove,
and--everything. But there are no shops; and what shall I make my soup
out of?"
Henri stared at her rather blankly.
"True!" he said. "Very true. And I never thought of it!"
Then suddenly they both laughed, the joyous ringing laugh of ridiculous
youth, which can see its own absurdities and laugh at them.