It was clear now that John was not coming back.  He had forgotten them.

The Belgian’s hold slackened; he dozed, falling against her and recovering himself with a jerk and begging her pardon.  She drew down his head on to her shoulder and let it rest there.  Her mind was soaked in the smell of his rank breath, of the warm sweat that oozed through his tunic, the hot, fetid smell that came through his unlaced boots.  She didn’t care; she was too sorry for him.  She could feel nothing but the helpless pressure of his body against hers, nothing but her pity that hurt her and was exquisite like love.  Yesterday she had thought it would be good to die with John.  Now she thought it would be good to die with the wounded Belgian, since John had left her there to die.

And again, she had a vehement desire for life, a horror of the unjust death John was bringing on them.

But of course there wouldn’t be any death.  If nobody came she would walk back to Ghent and bring out the ambulance.

If only he had shouted to her to carry the wounded man and come.  In the minute between the concussion of the shell and the cranking of the engine.  But she could see him rushing.  If only she knew why he had left them....  She wanted to get back to Ghent, to see John, to know.  To know if John—­if John really was—­Nothing could be worse than not knowing.

It didn’t matter so much his forgetting her.  The awful thing was his forgetting the wounded man.  How could you forget a wounded man?  When she remembered the Belgian’s terrified hare’s eyes she hated John.

And, as she sat there supporting his head with her shoulder, she thought again.  There must have been a wounded man in the house John had come out of.  Was it possible that he had forgotten him, too?...  He hadn’t forgotten.  She could see him looking back over his shoulder; looking at something that was lying there, that couldn’t be anything but a wounded man.  Or a dead man.  Whatever it was, it had been the last thing he had seen; the last thing he had thought of before he made his dash.  It wasn’t possible that he had left a wounded man in there, alive.  It was not possible.

And all the time while she kept on telling herself that it was not possible she saw a wounded man in the room John had left; she saw his head turning to the doorway, and his eyes, frightened; she felt his anguish in the moment that he knew himself abandoned.  Not forgotten.  Abandoned.

She would have to go over to the house and see.  She must know whether the man was there or not there.  She raised the Belgian’s head, gently, from her shoulder.  She would have to wake him and tell him what she was going to do, so that he mightn’t think she had left him and be frightened.

But the Belgian roused himself to a sudden virile determination.  Mademoiselle must not cross the road.  It was too dangerous.  Mademoiselle would be hit.  He played on her pity with an innocent, cunning cajolery.  “Mademoiselle must not leave me.  I do not want to be left.”