Belle was very quiet that evening. After dinner she went to Harvey's room and found him dressing to go out.
"I'm going with a crowd to the theater," he said. "First week of the summer stock company, you know."
He tied his tie defiantly, avoiding Belle's eyes in the mirror.
"Harvey," she said, "they're going to bring Sara Lee home."
He said nothing, but his hands shook somewhat. "And I think," Belle said, "that you will be sorry for what you have done—all the rest of your life."
XXI
By the time Henri was well enough to resume his former activities it was almost the first of May. The winter quiet was over with a vengeance, and the Allies were hammering hard with their first tolerably full supply of high-explosive shells.
Cheering reports came daily to the little house—, of rapidly augmenting armies, of big guns on caterpillar trucks that were moving slowly up to the Allied Front. Great Britain had at last learned her lesson, that only shells of immense destructiveness were of any avail against the German batteries. She was moving heaven and earth to get them, but the supply was still inadequate. With the new shells experiments were being made in barrage fire—costly experiments now and then; but the Allies were apt in learning the ugly game of modern war.
Only on the Belgian Front was there small change. The shattered army was being freshly outfitted. England was sending money and ammunition, and on the sand dunes small bodies of fresh troops drilled and smiled grimly and drilled again. But there were not, as in England and in France, great bodies of young men to draw from. Too many had been caught beyond the German wall of steel.