"Yes. I couldn't do anything. I had the German. It was all over in a second…. When I got there I found the Belgian standing up over him, wiping his bayonet with his pockethandkerchief. He said his rifle went off by accident."
"Couldn't it? Rifles do."
"Bayonets don't…. I suppose I could get him court martialed if I tried.
But I shan't. After all, it was his captain. I don't blame him,
Charlotte."
"No…. It was really you and me, Billy. We brought him back to be killed."
"I don't know that we did bring him—that he wasn't coming by himself. He couldn't keep off it. Even if we did, you wouldn't be sorry for that, would you?"
"No. It was the best thing we could do for him."
But at night, lying awake in her bed, she cried. For then she remembered what he had been. On Barrow Hill, on their seat in the beech ring, through the Sunday evenings, when feeding time and milking time were done.
* * * * *
At four o'clock in the morning she was waked by Sutton, standing beside her bed. The orders had come through to evacuate the hospital. Three hours later the ambulances had joined the great retreat.