She stood up, ready.  “Where is he?”

“By himself.  In his room.”

She went to him there.

He was sitting at his little table.  He had been trying to write a letter, but he had pushed it from him and left it.  You could see he was absorbed in some bitter meditation.  She seated herself at the head of his bed, on his pillow, where she could look down at him.

“John,” she said, “you can’t go on like this—­”

“Like what?”

He held his head high; but the excited, happy light had gone out of his eyes; they stared, not as though they saw anything, but withdrawn, as though he were contemplating the fearful memory of his fear.

And she was sorry for him, so sorry that she couldn’t bear it.  She bit her lip lest she should sob out with pain.

“Oh—­” she said, and her pain stopped her.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about—­’going on like this.’  I’m—­going—­on.”

“What’s the good?  You’ve had enough.  If I were you I should go home.  You know you can’t stand it.”

“What?  Go and leave my cars to Sutton?”

“McClane could take them.”

“I don’t know how long McClane signed on for. I signed on for the duration of the war.”

“There wasn’t any signing on.”

“Well, if you like, I swore I wouldn’t go back till it was over.”

“Yes, and supposing it happens again.”

“What should happen again?”

“What happened this afternoon....  And it wasn’t the first time.”

“Do you know what happened?”

“I saw what happened.  You simply went to pieces.”

“My dear Charlotte, you went to pieces, if you like.”

“I know that’s what you told Mac.  And he knows how true it is.”

“Does he?  Well—­he shan’t have my ambulances.  You don’t suppose I’m going to let McClane fire me out of Belgium?...  I suppose he put you up to this....”

He stood up as a sign to her to leave him.  “I don’t see that there’s anything more to be said.”

“There’s one thing.” (She slid to her feet.) “You swore you’d stick till the war’s over. I swore, if I had to choose between you and the wounded, it shouldn’t be you.”

“You haven’t got to choose.  You’ve only got to obey orders....”

His face stiffened.  He looked like some hard commander imposing an unanswerable will.

“...  The next time,” he said, “you’ll be good enough to remember that I settle what risks are to be taken, not you.”

Her soul stiffened, too, and was hard.  She stood up against him with her shoulder to the door.

“It sounds all right,” she said.  “But the next time I’ll carry him on my back all the way.”

* * * * *

She went to bed with her knowledge.  He funked and lied.  The two things she couldn’t stand.  His funk and his lying were a real part of him.  And it was as if she had always known it, as if all the movements of her mind had been an effort to escape her knowledge.