She thought:  No.  I’ve had enough.  I shall give it up.  I won’t ask him.  But she knew that she would ask him.  Once started, having gone so far, flash by flash and step by step, she couldn’t give it up; she would go on, even now, till her knowledge was complete.  Then she was aware again of the soldier’s eyes.

They were very large and bright and black in his smooth boy’s face; he had a small innocent boy’s mouth that seemed to move, restless and fascinated, like his eyes.  Presently she saw that he was looking at her, that his eyes returned to her again and again, as if he were aware of some connection between her and the thing that fascinated him, as if he were somehow connected.

He was listening to her now as Sutton spoke to her.

“We must get him away quick.”

“Yes.  Do let’s get him away.”

Sutton shook his head.  He was thinking of the wounded captain.

“We can’t yet.  I’ll come back for him.”

“Then I’ll wait with him here.”

“Oh no—­I think—­”

“I can’t leave him.”

“It isn’t safe.  The place may be taken.”

“I won’t leave him.”  Sutton hesitated.  “I won’t, Billy.”

“McClane, she says she won’t leave him.”

“Then,” McClane said, “we must take him now.  We’ll have to make room somehow.”

(To make room for him—­somehow.)

Sutton and the soldier carried the captain out and came back for John’s body.  The Belgian sprang forward with eager, subservient alacrity to put himself at the head of the stretcher, but Sutton thrust him aside.

The Belgian shrugged his shoulders and picked up his rifle with an air of exaggerated unconcern.  Sutton and McClane carried out the stretcher.

Charlotte was following them when the soldier stopped her.

“Mademoiselle—­”

He had propped his rifle against the trestles and stood there, groping in his pocket.  A dirty handkerchief, dragged up by his fumbling, hung out by its corner.  All along the sharp crease there was a slender smear of blood.  He looked down at it and pushed it back out of her sight.

He had taken something out of his pocket.

“I will give you this.  I found it on the battlefield.”

He handed her a small leather pocketbook that was John’s.  It had her photograph in it and his, taken together.

* * * * *

They were putting him out of sight, under the hood of the ambulance, and she waited there when the war correspondent came up.

“Can you tell me the name of the volunteer who’s been killed?”

“Conway.  John Roden Conway.”

“What? That man?  The man who raced the Germans into Zele?”

“Yes,” she said, “that man.”

* * * * *

She was in John’s room, packing, gathering together the things she would have to take to his father.  Sutton came to her there.