She thought:  It’s awful for him.  He minds too much.  It hurt her to see how he minded.  After all, he did matter.  Deep inside her he mattered more than the wounded men; he mattered more than anything on earth.  Only there wasn’t time, there wasn’t time to think of him.

She turned to the next man and caught sight of the two machine guns with their tilted muzzles standing in the corner of the room by the chimney.  They must remember to bring away the guns.

John’s hypnotic whisper came again.  “You might get those splints, Charlotte.”

As she crossed the road a shell fell in the open field beyond, and burst, throwing up a great splash and spray of brown earth.  She stiffened herself in an abrupt gesture of defiance.  Her mind retorted:  “You’ve missed, that time.  You needn’t think I’m going to put myself out for you.”  To show that she wasn’t putting herself out (in case they should be looking) she strolled with dignity to her car, selected carefully the kind of splint she needed, and returned.  She thought:  Oh well—­supposing they do hit.  We must get those men out before another comes.

John looked up as she came to him.  His face glistened with pinheads of sweat; he panted in the choking air.

“Where did that shell burst?”

“Miles away.”

“Are you certain?”

“Rather.”

She lied.  Why not?  John had been lying all the time.  Lying was part of their defiance, a denial that the enemy’s effort had succeeded.  Nothing mattered but the fixing of the splints and the carrying of the men....

John was cranking up the engine when she turned back into the house.

“I say, what are you doing?”

“Going for the guns.”

There was, she noticed, a certain longish interval between shells.  John and the wounded men would be safe from shrapnel under the shelter of the wall.  She brought out the first gun and stowed it at the back of the car.  Then she went in for the other.  It stood on the seat between them with its muzzle pointing down the road.  Charlotte put her arm round it to steady it.

On the way back to the dressing-station she sat silent, thinking of the three wounded men in there, behind, rocked and shaken by the jolting of the car on the uneven causeway.  John was silent, too, absorbed by his steering.

But as they ran into Ghent the romance of it, the romance of it, came back to her.  It wasn’t over yet.  They would have to go out again for the wounded they had had to leave behind at Berlaere.

“John—­John—­It’s like nothing else on earth.”

“I told you it would be.”

Slowly realization came to her.  They had brought in their wounded under the enemy’s fire.  And they had saved the guns.

* * * * *

“Do you mind,” John said, “if Sutton goes instead of me He hasn’t been out yet?”

“N-no.  Not if I can go too.”