closing and opening of his eyes.

I thought, he will open his eyes to-night and look for me and I shall
not be there. He will know that he has been left to the Belgians, who
cannot understand him, whom he cannot understand. And he will think that
I have betrayed him.

I felt as if I _had_ betrayed him.

I am sitting between Mr. Riley and Miss Ashley-Smith. Mr. Riley is ill;
he has got blood-poisoning through a cut in his hand. Every now and then
I remember him, and draw the rug over his knees as it slips. Miss
Ashley-Smith, tired with her night watching, has gone to sleep with her
head on my shoulder, where it must be horribly jolted and shaken by my
cough, which of course chooses this moment to break out again. I try to
get into a position that will rest her better; and between her and Mr.
Riley I forget for a second.

Then the obsession begins again, and I am shut in between the blond
walls with the wounded man.

I feel his hand and arm lying heavily on my shoulder in the attempt to
support me as I kneel by his bed with my arms stretched out together
under the hollow of his back, as we wait for the pillow that never
comes.

It is quite certain that I have betrayed him.

It seems to me then that nothing that could happen to me in Ghent could
be more infernal than leaving it. And I think that when the ambulance
stops to put down the Belgian soldier I will get out and walk back with
him to Ghent.

Every half-mile I think that the ambulance will stop to put down the
Belgian soldier.

But the ambulance does not stop. It goes on and on, and we have got to
Ecloo before we seem to have put three miles between us and Ghent.

Still, though I'm dead tired when we get there, I can walk three miles
easily. I do not feel at all insane with my obsession. On the contrary,
these moments are moments of exceptional lucidity.[33] While the
Commandant goes to look for the Convent I get out and look for the
Belgian soldier. Other Belgian soldiers have joined him in the village
street.

I tell him I want to go back to Ghent. I ask him how far it is to walk,
and if he will take me. And he says it is twenty kilometres. The other
soldiers say, too, it is twenty kilometres. I had thought it couldn't
possibly be more than four or five at the outside. And I am just sane
enough to know that I can't walk as far as that if I'm to be any good
when I get there.

We wait in the village while they find the Convent and take the wounded