“McClane?”

“He’s a psychotherapist.  He knows more about people’s souls than I know about their bodies.  He probably knows all about Conway’s soul.”

Silence drifted between them, dim and silvery like the garden mist.

“Charlotte—­are we never to get away from him?  Is he always to stick between us?  That dead man.”

“It isn’t that.”

“What is it, then?”

“All this....  I’d give anything to care for you, Billy dear, but I don’t care.  I can’t.  I can’t care for anything but the war.”

“The war won’t last for ever.  And afterwards?”

“I can’t see any afterwards.”

Sutton smiled.

“And yet,” he said, “there will be one.”

XVII

The boat went steadily, cutting the waves with its sound like the flowing of stiff silk.

Charlotte and Sutton and McClane, stranded at Dunkirk on their way to England, had been taken on board the naval transport Victoria.  They were the only passengers besides some young soldiers, and these had left them a clear space on the deck.  Charlotte was sitting by herself under the lee of a cabin when McClane came to her there.

He was straddling and rubbing his hands.  Something had pleased him.

“I knew,” he said, “that some day I should get you three.  And that I should get those ambulances.”

She couldn’t tell whether he meant that he always got what he wanted or that he had foreseen John Conway’s fate which would ultimately give it him.

“The ambulances—­Yes.  You always wanted them.”

“Not more than I wanted you and Sutton.”

He seemed aware of her secret antagonism, yet without resentment, waiting till it had died down before he spoke again.  He was sitting beside her now.

“What are you going to do about Conway?”

“Nothing.  Except lie about him to his father.”

“That’s all right as long as you don’t lie about him to yourself.”

“I’ve lied about him to other people.  Never to myself.  I was in love with him, if that’s what you mean.  But he finished that.  What’s finished is finished.  I haven’t a scrap of feeling for him left.”

“Are you quite sure?”

“Quite.  I’m not even sorry he’s dead.”

“You’ve forgiven him?”

“I’m not always sure about that.  But I’m trying to forget him.”

McClane looked away.

“Do you ever dream about him, Charlotte?”

“Never.  Not now.  I used to.  I dreamed about him once three nights running.”

He looked at her sharply.  “Could you tell me what you dreamed?”

She told him her three dreams.

“You don’t suppose they meant anything?” she said.

“I do.  They meant that part of you was kicking.  It knew all the time what he was like and was trying to warn you.”