“They are near.  They’re all round in a ring with only a little narrow opening up there.  And the ring’s getting closer.”

“It’s easier to push back a narrow ring than a wide one.”

“It’s easier to break through a thin ring than a thick one, and who’s going to push?”

“We are.  The British.  We’ll come pouring in, hundreds of thousands of us, through that little narrow opening up there.”

“If we only would—­”

“Of course we shall.  If I thought we wouldn’t, if I thought we were going to let the Belgians down, if we betrayed them—­My God!  I’d kill myself....  No.  No, I wouldn’t.  That wouldn’t hurt enough.  I’d give up my damned country and be a naturalized Belgian.  Why, they trust us.  They trust us to save Antwerp.”

“If we don’t, that wouldn’t be betrayal.”

“It would.  The worst kind.  It would be like betraying a wounded man; or a woman.  Like me betraying you, Jeanne.  You needn’t look like that.  It’s so bad that it can’t happen.”

Through the enveloping sadness she felt a prick of joy, seeing him so valiant, so unbeaten in his soul.  It supported her certainty.  His soul was so big that nothing could satisfy it but the big thing, the big dangerous thing.  He wouldn’t even believe that Antwerp was falling.

* * * * *

She knew.  She knew.  There was not the smallest doubt about it any more.  She saw it happen.

It happened in the village near Lokeren, the village whose name she couldn’t remember.  The Germans had taken Lokeren that morning; they were in Lokeren.  At any minute they might be in the village.

You had to pass through a little town to get to it.  And there they had been told that they must not go on.  And they had gone on.  And in the village they were told that they must go back and they had not gone back.  They had been given five minutes to get in their wounded and they had been there three-quarters of an hour, she and John working together, and Trixie Rankin with McClane and two of his men.

Charlotte had been sorry for Sutton and Gwinnie and the rest of McClane’s corps who had not come out with them to this new place, but had been sent back again to Melle where things had been so quiet all morning that they hadn’t filled their ambulances, and half of them had hung about doing nothing.  She had fretted at the stupidity which had sent them where they were not wanted.  But here there were not enough hands for the stretchers, and Charlotte was wanted every second of the time.  From the first minute you could see what you were in for.

The retreat.

And for an instant, in the blind rush and confusion of it, she had lost sight of John.  She had turned the car round and left it with its nose pointing towards Ghent.  Trixie Rankin and the McClane men were at the front cars taking out the stretchers; John and McClane were going up the road.  She had got out her own stretcher and was following them when the battery came tearing down the road and cut them off.  It tore headlong, swerving and careening with great rattling and crashing noises.  She could see the faces of the men, thrown back, swaying; there was no terror in them, only a sort of sullen anger and resentment.