There was no devil in his voice, but he stared away from her as he spoke.

“I don’t want you to go to Ghent.  I want you to go on to Zele.”

“Zele?  Do I know the way?”

“It’s quite easy.  You turn round and go the way we went that first day—­you remember?  It’s the shortest cut from here.”

“Pretty bad going though.  Hadn’t we better go on and strike the main road?”

“Yes, if you want to go miles round and get held up by the transport.”

“All right—­if we can get through.”

“You’ll get through all right.”  His voice had the tone of finality.

“I’m to go by myself then?”

“Well—­if I’ve got to drive Mrs. Rankin—­”

She thought:  It’s going to be dangerous.

“By the way, I haven’t told her I’m sending you.  You don’t want her butting in and going with you.”

“No.  I certainly don’t want Trixie....  And look here, I don’t particularly want those men.  Much better leave them here where they’re safe and send in again for them.”

“I don’t know that I can send in again.  We’re supposed to have finished this job.  The cars may be wanted for anything. They’ll be all right.”

“I don’t like taking them.”

“You’re making difficulties,” he said.  He was irritable and hurried; he had kept on turning and looking up the street as though he thought the lieutenant might appear again at any minute.

“When will you learn that you’ve simply got to obey orders?”

“All right.”

She hadn’t a chance with him.  Whatever she said and did he could always bring it round to that, her orders.  She thought she knew what his orders had been.

He cranked up the engine.  She could see him stooping and rising to it, a rhythmic, elastic movement; he was cranking energetically, with a sort of furious, flushed enjoyment of his power.

She backed and turned and he ran forward with her as she started.  He shouted “Don’t think about the main road.  Get through....  And hurry up.  You haven’t got too much time.”

She knew.  It was going to be dangerous and he funked it.  He hadn’t got to drive Trixie into Ghent.  When the worst came to the worst Trixie could drive herself.  She thought:  He didn’t tell her because he daren’t.  He knew she wouldn’t let him send me by myself.  She’d make him go.  She’d stand over him and bully him till he had to.

Still, she could do it.  She could get through.  Going by herself was better than going with a man who funked it.  Only she would have liked it better without the two wounded men.  She thought of them, jostled, falling against each other, falling forward and recovering, shaken by the jolting of the car, and perhaps brought back into danger.  She suspected that not having too much time might be the essence of the risk.

Everything was quiet as they ran along the open road from the village to the hamlet that sat low and humble on the edge of the fields.  A few houses and the long wall of the barn still stood; but by this time the house she had brought the guns from had the whole of its roof knocked in, and the stripped gable at the end of the row no longer pricked up its point against the sky; the front of the hollow shell had fallen forward and flung itself across the road.