Time passed quickly, as always it does when there is work to do. Round
the ruined houses the gray grass turned green again, and in travesties
of gardens early spring flowers began to show a touch of color.

The first of them greeted Sara Lee one morning as she stood on her
doorstep in the early sun. She gathered them and placed them, one on
each grave, in the cemetery near the poplar trees, where small wooden
crosses, sometimes surmounted by a cap, marked many graves.

Marie, a silent subdued Marie, worked steadily in the little house. She
did not weep, but now and then Sara Lee found her stirring something on
the stove and looking toward the quiet mill in the fields. And once
Sara Lee, surprising that look on her face, put her arms about the girl
and held her for a moment. But she did not say anything. There was
nothing to say.

With the opening up of the spring came increased movement and activity
among the troops. The beach and the sand dunes round La Panne were
filled with drilling men, Belgium's new army. Veterans of the winter,
at rest behind the lines, sat in the sun and pared potatoes for the
midday meal. Convalescents from the hospital appeared in motley
garments from the Ambulance Ocean and walked along the water front,
where the sea, no longer gray and sullen, rolled up in thin white lines
of foam to their very feet. Winter straw came out of wooden sabots.
Winter-bitten hands turned soft. Canal boats blossomed out with great
washings. And the sentry at the gun emplacement in the sand up the
beach gave over gathering sticks for his fire, and lay, when no one was
about, in a hollow in the dune, face to the sky.