back instead of me; but I am not
yet afraid of it. I do not yet think seriously that she will do it. I do
not see how she is going to, if the chauffeurs refuse to take her. (I do
not see how, in this case, I am to go myself.) And I do not imagine for
one moment that she will find a horse. Still, I am vaguely uneasy. And
the Chaplain doesn't make it any better by backing her up and declaring
that as she will be more good than either of us when she gets there, her
going is the best thing that in the circumstances can be done.

And in the end, with an extreme quietness and simplicity, she went.

We had not yet found the ambulance cars, and it seemed pretty certain
that Miss Ashley-Smith would not get her horse any more than the
Chaplain could get his cassock.

And then, just when we thought the difficulties of transport were
insuperable, we came straight on the railway lines and the station,
where a train had pulled up on its way to Ghent. Miss Ashley-Smith got
on to the train. I got on too, to go with her, and the Chaplain, who is
abominably strong, put his arms round my waist and pulled me off.

I have never ceased to wish that I had hung on to that train.

On our way back to the E.s' house we met the Commandant and told him
what had happened. I said I thought it was the worst thing that had
happened yet. It wasn't the smallest consolation when he said it was the
most sensible solution.

And when Mrs. ---- for fifteen consecutive seconds took the view that I
had decoyed Miss Ashley-Smith out on to that accursed road in order to
send her to Ghent, and deliberately persuaded her to go back to the
"Flandria" instead of me, for fifteen consecutive seconds I believed
that this diabolical thing was what I had actually done.

Mrs. ----'s indignation never blazes away for more than fifteen seconds;
but while the conflagration lasts it is terrific. And on circumstantial
evidence the case was black against me. When last seen, Miss
Ashley-Smith was entirely willing to be saved. She goes out for a walk
with me along a quiet country road, and the next thing you hear is that
she has gone back to Ghent. And since, actually and really, it was my
obsession that had passed into her, I felt that if I had taken Miss
Ashley-Smith down that road and murdered her in a dyke my responsibility
wouldn't have been a bit worse, if as bad.

And it seemed to me that all the people scattered among the blankets in
that strange room, those that s