"It will die," replied Henri, "but how soon? They are very strong, these little beasts."
The conductor of the bus made a suggestion then, one that froze the blood round Sara Lee's heart: "If you'll move away and let us run over it proper it'll be out of its trouble, miss."
Sara Lee raised haggard eyes to Henri.
"Did you hear that?" she said. "They'd do it too!"
The total result of a conference between four policemen, the costermonger, and, by that time, Mr. Travers—was to draw the animal off the street and into the square. Sara Lee stuck close by. So, naturally, did Henri. And when the hopeless condition of Nellie, as they learned she was named, became increasingly evident, Henri behaved like a man and a soldier.
He got out his revolver and shot her in the brain.
"A kindness," he explained, as Sara Lee would have caught his hand. "The only way, mademoiselle."
Mr. Travers had the usual British hatred of a crowd and publicity, coupled with a deadly fear of getting into the papers, except through an occasional letter to the Times. He vanished just before the shot, and might have been seen moving rapidly through the square, turning over in his mind the difficulty of trying to treat young American girls like rational human beings.
But Henri understood. He had had a French mother, and there is a leaven of French blood in the American temperament, old Huguenot, some of it. So Americans love beauty and obey their impulses and find life good to do things rather than to be something or other more or less important. And so Henri could quite understand how Sara Lee had forgotten herself when Mr. Travers could not. And he understood, also, when Sara Lee, having composed the little donkey's quiet figure, straightened up with tears in her eyes.
"It was very dear of you to come out," she said. "And—of course it was the best thing."