She had so mixed her hidden self with his in love that even now, with all her knowledge of him, she couldn’t help feeling the thing as he felt it and seeing as he saw.  Her mind kept on passing in and out of the illusion with little shocks of astonishment.

And yet all the time she was acutely aware of the difference.  When she went out with him she felt that she was going with something dangerous and uncertain.  She knew what fear was now.  She was afraid all the time of what he would do next, of what he would not do.  Her wounded were not safe with him.  Nothing was safe.

She wished that she could have gone out with Billy; with Billy there wouldn’t be any excitement, but neither would there be this abominable fear.  On the other hand you couldn’t let anybody else take the risk of John; and you couldn’t, you simply couldn’t let him go alone.  Conceive him going alone—­the things that might happen; she could at least see that some things didn’t.

It was odd, but John had never shown the smallest desire to go without her.  If he hadn’t liked it he could easily have taken Sutton or Gwinnie or one of the McClane men.  It was as if, in spite of his hostility, he still felt, as he had said, that where she was everything would be right.

And it looked as if this time nothing could go wrong.  When they came into the village the firing had stopped; it was concentrating further east towards Zele.  Trixie’s ambulance was packed, and Trixie was excited and triumphant.

Her gestures waved them back as useless, much too late; without them she had got in all the wounded.  But in the end they took over two of them, slight cases that Trixie resigned without a pang.  She had had to turn them out to make room for poor Gurney, the chauffeur, who had hurt himself, ruptured something, slipping on a muddy bank with his stretcher.

Mr. Conway, she said, could drive her back to Ghent and Charlotte could follow with the two men.  She had settled it all, in her bright, domineering way, in a second, and now swung herself up on the back step of her car.

They had got round the turn of the village and Charlotte was starting to follow them when she heard them draw up.  In another minute John appeared, walking back slowly down the street with a young Belgian lieutenant.  They were talking earnestly together.  So soon as Charlotte saw the lieutenant she had a sense of something happening, something fatal, that would change Trixie’s safe, easy programme.  John as he came on looked perturbed and thoughtful.  They stopped.  The lieutenant was saying something final.  John nodded assent and saluted.  The lieutenant sketched a salute and hurried away in the opposite direction.

John waited till he was well out of sight before he came to her. (She noticed that.) He had the look at first of being up to something, as if the devil of yesterday was with him still.

It passed.  His voice had no devil in it.  “I say, I’ve got a job for you, Charlotte.  Something you’ll like.”