She went slowly round the bed, taking care not to graze the feet that were stretched out to her.  And then she saw him.

She saw a deep purplish flush and glazed eyes that couldn’t see her, and a greyish beard pointing on an unshaved jaw; and a mouth half open, jerking out its breath.  She laid her left hand on his shoulder and with her right she held the limp hand that hung over the mattress.

I heard her say in French, “If only he knew me—­”

And the nun, “Perhaps—­at the end—­he will know you.”

And we left her there with his hand in her right hand and her left hand on his shoulder.  She was on her honour to stay with him till the end; but her eyes were fixed on Jevons, and they followed him as he went through the doorway of the cell.

* * * * *

The very minute he had left her Jimmy made his bolt for Lokeren.  He said he didn’t want me; but I had seen Viola’s eyes, and I said it would be safer.  If I took Viola’s car and Colville, she couldn’t follow us.

“She won’t follow us,” he said.  “She can’t leave him.”

We made the first bolt into Lokeren together; and we got out, each with a load of wounded, just as the Germans were coming in.  He made his second bolt by himself and secretly, while Colville and I were lunching.  We followed, and were stopped in a village two miles from Lokeren.

A Belgian Red Cross man met us here and told us that Jevons had got through in spite of them, and they didn’t in the least expect him to come back again.  He shrugged his shoulders and seemed to be disgusted and annoyed with Jimmy rather than to admire him.

We hung about in that village an interminable time.  I do not remember its name, if I ever knew it; but I know and remember every house in it and every tree in the avenue at the turn of the grey road that led to Lokeren, and even now, in my worst dreams, I find myself in the little plantation at the end of the village on the left where the railway siding is, and where the trains came in loaded with wounded.  I am always waiting for Jimmy and looking for Jimmy and not finding him.  And at one point I always stumble over Viola’s body.  I find her lying wounded in a ditch that runs through the plantation.  And when I find her I know that Jimmy is dead.  And that frightens me—­Jimmy’s death, I mean, not Viola’s body.  I take Viola’s body as a matter of course.

It is an abominable dream.

But even that dream is not more astonishing, and it is far less improbable than what I was to see.  We were at the end of the village.  Colville had drawn our car up in the middle of the street, and I was standing by him, when two Belgian soldiers rushed up to us, pointing up the road, and shouting to Colville to clear out of the way.

I turned.  Round the bend of the road where the avenue of trees was I saw a train of horses and gun-carriages careening with the curve, and a battery of Belgian artillery came charging down in full retreat.  And now in the middle of the battery as if he were part of it and informed it with his energy and speed, and now in front of it as if he led it, and joyous as if he had turned its retreat into a victory, came Jimmy driving his car.