It flashed on her that all these people thought that John was her lover, her lover in the way they understood love.  They were looking at him as if they hated him.  But John’s face was quiet and composed and somehow triumphant; it held itself up against all the hostile faces; it fronted McClane and his men as their equal; it was the face of a man who has satisfied a lust.  His whole body had a look of assurance and accomplishment, as if his cruelty had given him power.

And with it all he kept his dreadful beauty.  It hurt her to look at him.

She rose, leaving her tea untasted, and went out of the room.  She couldn’t sit there with him.  She had given him up.  Her horror of him was pure, absolute.  It would never return on itself to know pity or remorse.

XIII

And the next day, as if nothing had happened, he was excited and eager to set out.  He could sleep off his funk in the night, like drink, and get up in the morning as if it had never been.  He was more immune from memory than any drunkard.  He woke to his romance as a child wakes to the renewed wonder of the world.  It was so real to him that, however hardly you judged him, you couldn’t think of him as a humbug or a hypocrite....  No.  He was not that.  He was not that.  His mind truly lived in a glorious state for which none of his disgraceful deeds were ever done.  It created a sort of innocence for him.  She could forgive him (even after yesterday), she could almost believe in him again when she saw him coming down the hall to the ambulance with his head raised and his eyes shining, gallant and keen.

They were to go to Berlaere.  Trixie Rankin had gone on before them with Gurney, McClane’s best chauffeur.  McClane and Sutton were at Melle.

They had not been to Berlaere since that day, the first time they had gone out together.  That time at least had been perfect; it remained secure; nothing could ever spoil it; she could remember the delight of it, their strange communion of ecstasy, without doubt, without misgiving.  You could never forget.  It might have been better if you could, instead of knowing that it would exist in you forever, to torment you by its unlikeness to the days, the awful, incredible days that had come afterwards.  There was no way of thinking that John had been more real that day than he had been yesterday.  She was simply left with the inscrutable mystery of him on her hands.  But she could see clearly that he was more real to himself.  Yesterday and the day before had ceased to exist for him.  He was back in his old self.

There was only one sign of memory that he gave.  He was no longer her lover; he no longer recognised her even as his comrade.  He was her commandant.  It was his place to command, and hers to be commanded.  He looked at her, when he looked at her at all, with a stern coldness.  She was a woman who had committed some grave fault, whom he no longer trusted.  So masterly was his playing of this part, so great, in a way, was still his power over her, that there were moments when she almost believed in the illusion he created.  She had committed some grave fault.  She was not worthy of his trust.  Somewhere, at some time forgotten, in some obscure and secret way, she had betrayed him.