The nuns had stopped, courteously, to greet her; she fell behind with one of them; the two others had overtaken John who had walked on, keeping up his stiff, repudiating air.

The air, the turn of the head, the look that she had dreamed.  Only in the dream it had hurt her, and now she was hard and had no pain.

* * * * *

It was in the Convent garden that they played it out, in one final, astounding conversation.

The nuns had brought two chairs out on to the flagged terrace and set a small table there covered with a white cloth.  Thus invited, John had no choice but to take his place beside her.  Still he retained his mood.

(The nuns had left them.  Sutton was in one of the wards, helping with an operation.)

“I thought,” he said, “that I was going to have peace....”

It seemed to her that they had peace.  They had been so much at the mercy of chance moments that this secure hour given to them in the closed garden seemed, in its quietness, immense.

“...  But first it’s Sutton, then it’s you.”

“We needn’t say anything unless you like.  There isn’t much to be said.”

“Oh, isn’t there!”

“Not,” she said, “if you’re coming back.”

“Of course I’m coming back....  Look here, Charlotte.  You didn’t suppose I was really going to bolt, did you?”

“Were you going to change into your pyjamas at Ostend?”

“My pyjamas?  I brought them for Gurney.”

“And your sleeping draught was for Gurney?”

“Of course it was.”

“And your razors and your toothbrush, too.  Oh, John, what’s the good of lying?  You forgot that I helped Alice Bartrum to pack Gurney’s things.  You forget that Billy knows.”

“Do I?  I shan’t forget your going back on me; your betraying me,” he said.

And for the first time she realised how alone he was; how horribly alone.  He had nobody but her.

“Who have I betrayed you to?”

“To Sutton.  To McClane.  To everybody you talked to.”

“No.  No.”

“Yes.  And you betrayed me in your thoughts.  That’s worse.  People don’t always mean what they say.  It’s what they think.”

“What was I to think?”

“Why, that all the damnable things you said about me weren’t true.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You’ve betrayed me by the things you didn’t say.”

“Why should I have betrayed you?”

“You know why.  When a woman betrays a man it’s always for one reason.”

He threw his head back to strike at her with his eyes, hard and keen, dark blue like the blade of a new knife ...  “Because he hasn’t given her what she wants.”

“Oh, what I want—­I thought we’d settled that long ago.”

“You’ve never settled it.  It isn’t in you to settle it.”

“I can’t talk to you about that.  You’re too horrible.  But I didn’t betray you.”