"In France. Or Belgium."
He shrugged his shoulders.
"We have many offers of help. What we need, mademoiselle, is not workers. We have, at our base hospital, already many English nurses."
"I am not a nurse."
"I am sorry. The whole world is sorry for Belgium, and many would work. What we need"—he shrugged his shoulders again—"is food, clothing, supplies for our brave little soldiers."
Sara Lee looked extremely small and young. The Belgian sat down on a chair and surveyed her carefully.
"You English are doing a—a fine work for us," he observed. "We are grateful. But of course the"—he hesitated—"the pulling up of an entire people—it is colossal."
"But I am not English," said Sara Lee. "And I have a little money. I want to make soup for your wounded men at a railway station or—any place. I can make good soup. And I shall have money each month to buy what I need."
Only then was Sara Lee admitted to the crowded little room.
Long afterward, when the lights behind the back drop had gone down and Sara Lee was back again in her familiar setting, one of the clearest pictures she retained of that amazing interlude was of that crowded little room in the Savoy, its single littered desk, its two typewriters creating an incredible din, a large gentleman in a dark-blue military cape seeming to fill the room. And in corners and off stage, so to speak, perhaps a half dozen men, watching her curiously.