The thought of McClane’s illumination consoled her for her own inferior place in the adventure.  This time the chauffeurs would have to stay at the end of the village with their cars.  The three were drawn up at the street side, close under the house walls, McClane’s first.  Then Sutton’s, with Gwinnie.  Then hers; behind it the short straight road where the firing would come down.

John stood in the roadway waiting for the others.  He had his hand beside her hand, grasping the arm of the driver’s seat.

“I wish you could take me with you,” she said.

“Can’t.  The orders are, all chauffeurs to stand by the cars.”

...  His eyebrows knotted and twitched in sudden anxiety.

“You know, Sharlie, you’ll be fired on.”

“I know.  I don’t mind, John, I don’t really.  I shall be all right.”

“Yes.  You’ll be all right.”  But by the way he kept on glancing up and down the road she could see he was uneasy.  “If you could have stood in front of those cars. You’re in the most dangerous place here.”

“Somebody’s got to be in it.”

He looked at her and smiled.  “Jeanne,” he said, “in her armour.”

“Rot.”

And they were silent.

“I say, John—­my car does cover Gwinnie’s a bit, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said abruptly.

“That’s all right.  You must go now.  They’re coming for the stretchers.”

His face quivered.  He thrust out his hand quickly, and as she took it she thought:  He thinks he isn’t coming back.  She was aware of Mrs. Rankin and two of the McClane men with stretchers, passing; she could see Mrs. Rankin looking at them as she came on, smiling over her shoulder, drawing the men’s attention to their leave-taking.

She thought:  They don’t shake hands when they’re going out.  They don’t think whether they’re coming back or not....  They don’t think at all.  But then, none of them were lovers as she and John were lovers.

“John, you’d better go and carry Mrs. Rankin’s stretcher for her.”

He went.

She watched them as they walked together up the short straight road to the battlefield at the top.  Sutton followed with Alice Bartrum; then the McClane men; they nodded to her and smiled.  Then McClane, late, running, trying to overtake John and Mrs. Rankin, to get to the head of his unit.  Perhaps he was afraid that John, in his khaki, would be mistaken for the commandant.

How childish he was with his fear and jealousy.  Childish.  She thought of his petulant refusal to let John come in with them.  As if he could really keep him out.  When it came to action they were one corps; they couldn’t very well be divided, since McClane had more men than stretchers and John had more stretchers than men.  They would all be infinitely happier, working together like that, instead of standing stupidly apart, glaring and hating.