“Can I do anything, Monsieur?”

“No, Mademoiselle.  It is done.”

His eyes smiled at her; but his lips were quivering as he took again his missal and his purple bag.  She watched him going on slowly down the street till he turned into the wine-shop.  She wondered:  Had he seen?  Did he know why John was there?  In another minute John came out, hurrying to the car.

He glanced down at the blood stains by the back step; then he looked in; and when he saw the man lying on the stretcher he turned on her in fury.

“What are you thinking of?  I told you you weren’t to take him.”

“I had to.  I couldn’t leave him there.  I thought—­”

“You’ve no business to think.”

“Well, but the cure—­”

“The cure doesn’t know anything about it.”

“I don’t care.  If he’s in a clean bed—­if they take his boots off—­”

“I told you they can’t spare clean beds for corpses.  He’ll be dead before you can get him there.”

“Not if we’re quick.”

“Nonsense.  We must get him out of that.”

He seized the handle of the stretcher and began pulling; she hung on to his arm and stopped that.

“No.  No,” she said.  “You shan’t touch him.”

He flung her arm off and turned.  “You fool,” he said.  “You fool.”

She looked at him steadily, a long look that remembered, that made him remember.

“There isn’t time,” she said.  “They’ll begin firing in another minute.”

“Damn you.”  But he had turned, slinking round the corner of the hood to the engine.  While he cranked it up she thought of the kit that one of the men had left there in the yard.  She made a dash and fetched it, and as she threw it on the floor the car started.  She snatched at the rope and swung herself up on to the step.  The dying man lay behind her, straight and stiff; his feet in their heavy boots stuck out close under her hand.

The four men nodded and grinned at her.  They protected her.  They understood.

If only she could get him into a clean bed.  If only she had had time to take his boots off.  It would be all right if only she could bring him in alive.

He was still alive when they got into Ghent.

She had forgotten John and it was not until they came to take out the stretcher that she was again aware of him.  They had drawn up before the steps of the hospital; he had got down and was leaning sideways, staring under the stretcher.

“What is it?”

“You can see what it is.  Blood.”

From the hole in the man’s head, through the soaked bandages, it still dripped, dripped with a light sound; it had made a glairy pool on the floor of the ambulance.

“Don’t look at it,” she said.  “It’ll make you sick.  You know you can’t stand it.”

“Oh.  I can’t stand it, can’t I?”

He straightened himself.  He threw back his head; his upper lip lifted, stretched tight and thin above the clean white teeth.  His eyes looked down at her, narrowed, bright slits under dropped lids.