“That Belgian boy?”

“Yes.  I couldn’t do anything.  I had the German.  It was all over in a second....  When I got there I found the Belgian standing up over him, wiping his bayonet with his pockethandkerchief.  He said his rifle went off by accident.”

“Couldn’t it?  Rifles do.”

“Bayonets don’t....  I suppose I could get him court martialed if I tried.  But I shan’t.  After all, it was his captain.  I don’t blame him, Charlotte.”

“No....  It was really you and me, Billy.  We brought him back to be killed.”

“I don’t know that we did bring him—­that he wasn’t coming by himself.  He couldn’t keep off it.  Even if we did, you wouldn’t be sorry for that, would you?”

“No.  It was the best thing we could do for him.”

But at night, lying awake in her bed, she cried.  For then she remembered what he had been.  On Barrow Hill, on their seat in the beech ring, through the Sunday evenings, when feeding time and milking time were done.

* * * * *

At four o’clock in the morning she was waked by Sutton, standing beside her bed.  The orders had come through to evacuate the hospital.  Three hours later the ambulances had joined the great retreat.

XVI

They had halted in Bruges, and there their wounded had been taken into the Convent wards to rest.

Charlotte and Sutton were sitting out, alone together on the flagged terrace in the closed garden.  The nuns had brought out the two chairs again, and set again the little table, covered with the white cloth.  Again the silver mist was in the garden, but thinned now to the clearness of still water.

They had been silent after the nuns had left them.  Sutton’s sad, short-sighted eyes stared out at the garden without seeing it.  He was lost in melancholy.  Presently he came to himself with a long sigh—­

“Charlotte, what are we going to do now?  Do you know?”

“I know.  I’m going into Mac’s corps.”

“So am I. That isn’t what I meant.”

For a moment she didn’t stop to wonder what he did mean.  She was too full of what she was going to do.

“Is that wise?  I don’t altogether trust old Mac.  He’ll use you till you drop.  He’ll wear you to the last shred of your nerves.”

“I want to be used till I drop.  I want to be worn.  Besides, I know I’m safe with Mac.”

His cold, hard indifference made her feel safe.  She wasn’t really safe with Billy.  His goodness might disarm her any minute, his sadness might conceivably move her to a tender weakness.  But for McClane she would never have any personal feeling, never any fiery affection, any exalted devotion.  Neither need she be afraid of any profound betrayal.  Small betrayals perhaps, superficial disasters to her vanity, while his egoism rode over it in triumph.  He didn’t want affection or anything fiery, anything that John had had.  He would leave her in her hardness; he would never ask anything but hard, steel-cold loyalty and a willingness to share his risks.