“You listened to people who betrayed me.  If you cared for me in any decent way you’d have stood by me.”

“I have stood by you through thick and thin.  I’ve lied your lies.  There isn’t one of your lies I haven’t backed.  I’ve done everything I could think of to keep people from knowing about you.”

“Yet you go and tell Sutton that I’ve bolted.  That I’m a deserter.”

“Yes, when it was all over.  If you’d got away everybody’d have known.  As it is, only Billy and I know; and he’s safe.”

“You insist that I was trying to get away?  I own I thought of it.  But one doesn’t do everything one thinks of....  No....  Don’t imagine I was sick of the war, or sick of Belgium.  It’s you I’m sick of.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you.  You had your warning.  I told you what would happen if you let me see you wanted me.”

“You think you’ve seen that?”

“I’ve seen nothing else.”

“Once, perhaps.  Twice.  Once when you came to me on Barrow Hill.  And when we were crossing; once.  And each time you never saw it.”

“Anybody can see.  It’s in your face.  In your eyes and mouth.  You can’t hide your lust.”

“My—­’lust.’  Don’t you know I only cared for you because I’d done with that?”

They stopped.  The nuns were back again, bringing great cups of hot black coffee, coming quietly, and going quietly away.  It was wonderful, all that beauty and gentleness and peace existing in the horror of the war, and through this horror within horror that John had made.

They drank their coffee, slowly, greedily, prolonging this distraction from their torment.  Charlotte finished first.

“You say I want you.  I own I did once.  But I don’t now.  Why, I care more for the scrubbiest little Belgian with a smashed finger than I do for you.”

“I suppose you can satisfy your erotic susceptibilities that way.”

“I haven’t any, I tell you.  I only cared for you because I thought you were clean.  I thought your mind was beautiful.  And you aren’t clean.  And your mind’s the ugliest thing I know.  And the cruelest....  Let’s get it right, John.  I can forgive your funking.  If your nerves are jumpy they’re jumpy.  I daresay I shall be jumpy if the Germans come into Ghent before I’m out of it.  I can forgive everything you’ve done to me.  I can forgive your lying.  I see there’s nothing left for you but to lie....  But I can’t forgive your not caring for the wounded.  That’s cruel....  You didn’t care for that boy at Melle—­”

John’s mouth opened as if he were going to say something.  He seemed to gasp.

“—­No, you didn’t or you wouldn’t have left him.  Whatever your funk was like, you couldn’t have left him if you’d cared, any more than I could have left you.”

“He was dead when I left him.”

“He was still warm when I found him.  Billy thought you were bringing him away.  He says he wasn’t dead.”