"But why should I go?" Sara Lee asked. "It is kind of you to ask me, Jean. But I am here
to work, not to play."
Long ago Sara Lee had abandoned her idea of Jean as a paid chauffeur. She even
surmised, from something Marie had said, that he had been a person of importance in the
Belgium of before the war. So she was grateful, but inclined to be obstinate.
"You have been so much alone, mademoiselle--"
"Cut off from your own kind. And now and then one finds, at the hotel in Dunkirk, some
English nurses who are having a holiday. You would like to talk to them perhaps."
"Jean," she said unexpectedly, "why don't you tell me the truth? You want me to leave
the village to-night. Why?"
"Because, mademoiselle, there will be a bombardment."
"We expect it," he answered dryly.
Sara Lee went a little pale.
"But then I shall be needed, as I was before."
"No troops will pass through the town to-night. They will take a road beyond the fields."
"How do you know these things?" she asked, wondering. "About the troops I can
understand. But the bombardment."
"There are ways of finding out, mademoiselle," he replied in his noncommittal voice.
"Now, will you go?"
"May I tell Marie and Rene?"
"Then I shall not go. How can you think that I would consider my own safety and leave
them here?"
