For a moment she thought the way was blocked.  She thought:  If I can’t get round I must get over.  She backed, charged, and the car, rocking a little, struggled through.  And there, where the road swerved slightly, the high wall of a barn, undermined, bulged forward, toppling.  It answered the vibration of the car with a visible tremor.  So soon as she passed it fell with a great crash and rumbling and sprawled in a smoky heap that blocked her way behind her.

After that they went through quiet country for a time, but further east, near the town, the shelling began.  The road here was opened up into great holes with ragged, hollow edges; she had to skirt them carefully, and sometimes there would not be enough clear ground to move in, and one wheel of the car would go unsupported, hanging over space.

Yet she had got through.

As she came into Zele she met the last straggling line of the refugees.  They cried out to her not to go on.  She thought:  I must get those men before the retreat begins.

* * * * *

Returning with her heavy load of wounded, on the pitch-black road, half way to Ghent she was halted.  She had come up with the tail end of the retreat.

* * * * *

Trixie Rankin stood on the hospital steps looking out.  The car turned in and swung up the rubber incline, but instead of stopping before the porch it ran on towards the downward slope.  Charlotte jammed on the brakes with a hard jerk and backed to the level.

She couldn’t think how she had let the car do that.  She couldn’t think why she was slipping from the edge of it into Trixie’s arms.  And stumbling in that ignominious way on the steps with Trixie holding her up on one side....  It didn’t last.  After she had drunk the hot black coffee that Alice Bartrum gave her she was all right.

The men had gone out of the messroom, leaving them alone.

“I’m all right, Trixie, only a bit tired.”

“Tired?  I should think you were tired.  That Conway man’s a perfect devil.  Fancy scooting back himself on a safe trip and sending you out to Zele. Zele!”

“McClane doesn’t care much where he sends you.”

“Oh, Mac—­As if he could stop us.  But he’d draw the line at Zele, with the Germans coming into it.”

“Rot.  They weren’t coming in for hours and hours.”

“Well, anyhow he thought they were.”

“He didn’t think anything about it.  I wanted to go and I went.  He—­he couldn’t stop me.”

“It’s no good lying to me, Charlotte.  I know too much.  I know he had orders to go to Zele himself and the damned coward funked it.  I’ve a good mind to report him to Head Quarters.”

“No.  You won’t do that.  You wouldn’t be such a putrid beast.”

“If I don’t, Charlotte, it’s because I like you.  You’re the pluckiest little blighter in the world.  But I’ll tell you what I shall do.  Next time your Mr. Conway’s ordered on a job he doesn’t fancy I’ll go with him and hold his nose down to it by the scruff of his neck.  If he was my man I’d bloody well tell him what I thought of him.”