But that first day—No. He had been brave then. She had only lied because she was afraid he would worry about her…. Brave then. Could war tire you and wear you down, and change you from yourself? In two weeks? Change him so that she had to hate him!
Half the night she lay awake wondering: Do I hate him because he doesn't care about me? Or because he doesn't care about the wounded? She could see all their faces: the face of the wounded man at Melle (he had crawled out on his hands and knees to look for her); the face of the dead boy who hadn't died when John left him; the Flamand they brought from Lokeren, lying in the road; the face of the dead man in the shed—And John's face.
How could you care for a thing like that? How could you want a thing like that to care for you?
And she? She didn't matter. Nothing mattered in all the world but Them.
XIV
It was Saturday, the tenth of October, the day after the fall of Antwerp. The Germans were pressing closer round Ghent; they might march in any day. She had been in Belgium a hundred years; she had lived a hundred years under this doom.
But at last she was free of John. Utterly free. His mind would have no power over her any more. Nor yet his body. She was glad that he had not been her lover. Supposing her body had been bound to him so that it couldn't get away? The struggle had been hard enough when her first flash came to her; and when she had fought against her knowledge and denied it, unable to face the truth that did violence to her passion; and when she had given him up and was left with just that, the beauty of his body, and it had hurt her to look at him.
Oh well, nothing could hurt her now. And anyhow she would get through to-day without being afraid of what might happen. John couldn't do anything awful; he had been ordered on an absolutely safe expedition, taking medical stores to the convent hospital at Bruges and convoying Gurney, the sick chauffeur, to Ostend for England. Charlotte was to go out with Sutton, and Gwinnie was to take poor Gurney's place. She was glad she was going with Billy. Whatever happened Billy would go through it without caring, his mind fixed on the solid work.
And John, for an hour before he started, had been going about in gloom, talking of death. His death.
They were looking over the last letter from his father which he had asked her to answer for him. It seemed that John had told him the chances were he would be killed and had asked him whether in this case he would allow the Roden ambulances to be handed over to McClane. And the old man had given his consent.