"It's all right," she said. "He's coming."
She saw McClane holding John by the arm, and in her pain there was a sharper pang. She had the illusion of his being dragged back unwillingly.
McClane smiled as he came to her. He glanced at the Flamand lying heaped on his stretcher.
"He's been too much for you, has he?"
"Too much—? Yes."
Instantly she saw that John had lied, and instantly she backed his lie. She hated McClane thinking she had failed; but anything was better than his knowing the truth.
John and McClane picked up the stretcher and went on quickly. Charlotte walked beside the Flamand with her hand on his shoulder to comfort him. Again her pity was like love.
From the top of the village she could see the opening of the lane. Down there was the house with the tall green door where the dead man was. John had said he was dead.
Supposing he wasn't? Or supposing he was still warm and limp like the boy at Melle? She must know; it was a thing she must know for certain, or she would never have any peace. And when the Flamand was laid out on McClane's table, while McClane dressed his wound, she slipped down the lane and opened the green door.
The man lay on a row of packing cases with his feet parted. She put one hand over his heart and the other on his forehead under the lock of bloodstained hair. He was dead: stiff dead and cold. His tunic and shirt had been unbuttoned to ease his last breathing. She had a queer baffled feeling of surprise and incompleteness, as if some awful sense in her would have been satisfied if she had seen that he had been living when John had said that he was dead. To-day would then have been linked on firmly to the other day.