At least I suppose it was through the doors. All we knew was that he disappeared.
Then Ursula Dearmer handed over to me three cables to be sent from Dunkirk. I said good-bye to her and Mr. Riley. They got back into the motor-car, and they, too, very swiftly disappeared.
Mr. Riley went away bearing with him the baffling mystery of his personality. After nearly three weeks' association with him I know that Mr. Riley's whole heart is in his job of carrying the wounded. Beyond that I know no more of him than on the day when he first turned up before our Committee.
But with Ursula Dearmer it is different. Before the Committee she appeared as a very young girl, docile, diffident, only half-awake, and of dubious efficiency. I remember my solemn pledges to her mother that Ursula Dearmer should not be allowed to go into danger, and how, if danger insisted on coming to her, she should be violently packed up and sent home. I remember thinking what a nuisance Ursula Dearmer will be, and how, when things are just beginning to get interesting, I shall be told off to see her home.
And Ursula Dearmer, the youngest but one, has gone, not at all docilely and diffidently, into the greatest possible danger, and come out of it. And here she is, wide awake and in full command of the Ostend-Dunkirk expedition. And instead of my seeing her off and all the way home, she is very thoroughly and competently seeing me off.
At least this was her beautiful intention.
But getting out of France in war-time is not a simple matter.
When we tried to follow the flight of our luggage through the station door we were stopped by a sentry with a rifle. We produced our passports. They were not enough.
At the sight of us brought to halt there, all the refugees began to agitate their slips of paper. And on the slips we read the words "Laissez-passer."
My British Red Cross lady had no "laissez-passer." I had only my sixteenth part in the "laissez-passer" of the Corps, and that, hidden away in the Commandant's breast-pocket, was a part either of the luncheon-party or of the interview with the Belgian Minister of War.