"Good gracious!" she said, ravenous and exasperated. "Go and get me some bread and coffee, anyhow." She repeated it, slightly louder.
That was the tableau that Henri found when, after a custom that may be war or may be Continental, he had inquired the number of her room and made his way there.
There was a twinkle in his blue eyes as he bowed before her—and a vast relief too.
"So you are here!" he said in a tone of satisfaction. He had put in an extremely bad night, even for him, by whom nights were seldom wasted in a bed. While he was with her something of her poise had communicated itself to him. He had felt the confidence, in men and affairs, that American girls are given as a birthright. And her desire for service he had understood as a year or two ago he could not have understood. But he had stood by the rail staring north, and cursing himself for having placed her in danger during the entire crossing.
There was nothing about him that morning, however to show his bad hours. He was debonnaire and smiling.
"I am famishing," said Sara Lee. "And there are no eggs in this book—none whatever."
"Eggs! You wish eggs?"
"I just want food. Almost anything will do. I asked for eggs because they can come quickly."
Henri turned to the boy and sent him off with a rapid order. Then: "May I come in?" he said.
Sara Lee cast an uneasy glance over the room. It was extremely tidy, and unmistakably it was a bedroom. But though her color rose she asked him in. After all, what did it matter? To have refused would have looked priggish, she said to herself. And as a matter of fact one of the early lessons she learned in France was learned that morning—that though convention had had to go, like many other things in the war, men who were gentlemen ignored its passing.