"Rinehart, Mary Roberts - The Amazing Interlude" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rinehart Mary Roberts)

Only a fair sprinkling of these last, in those early days. On the first
afternoon there was a military funeral. A regiment of Scots, in kilts,
came swinging down from the church of St. Martin in the Fields, tall and
wonderful men, grave and very sad. Behind them, on a gun carriage, was
the body of their officer, with the British flag over the casket and his
sword and cap on the top.

Sara Lee cried bitterly. It was not until they had gone that she
remembered that Harvey had always called the Scots men in women's
petticoats. She felt a thrill of shame for him, and no amount of
looking at his picture seemed to help.

Mr. Travers called the second afternoon and was received by August at
the door as an old friend.

"She's waiting in there," he said. "Very nice young lady, sir. Very
kind to everybody."

Mr. Travers found her by a window looking out. There was a recruiting
meeting going on in Trafalgar Square, the speakers standing on the
monument. Now and then there was a cheer, and some young fellow
sheepishly offered himself. Sara Lee was having a mad desire to go
over and offer herself too. Because, she reflected, she had been in
London almost two days, and she was as far from France as ever. Not
knowing, of course, that three months was a fair time for the slow
methods then in vogue.

There was a young man in the room, but Sara Lee had not noticed him.
He was a tall, very blond young man, in a dark-blue Belgian uniform with
a quaint cap which allowed a gilt tassel to drop over his forehead. He
sat on a sofa, curling up the ends of a very small mustache, his legs,
in cavalry boots, crossed and extending a surprising distance beyond
the sofa.

The lights were up now, beyond the back drop, the stage darkened. A
new scene with a vengeance, a scene laid in strange surroundings, with
men, whole men and wounded men and spying men - and Sara Lee and this
young Belgian, whose name was Henri and whose other name, because of
what he suffered and what be did, we may not know.



IV


Henri sat on his sofa and watched Sara Lee. Also he shamelessly listened
to the conversation, not because he meant to be an eavesdropper but
because he liked Sara Lee's voice. He had expected a highly inflected
British voice, and instead here was something entirely different - that
is, Sara Lee's endeavor to reconcile the English "a" with her normal