hrust out his hand quickly, and as she took it she
thought: He thinks he isn't coming back. She was aware of Mrs. Rankin and
two of the McClane men with stretchers, passing; she could see Mrs.
Rankin looking at them as she came on, smiling over her shoulder, drawing
the men's attention to their leave-taking.

She thought: _They_ don't shake hands when they're going out. They don't
think whether they're coming back or not.... They don't think at all. But
then, none of them were lovers as she and John were lovers.

"John, you'd better go and carry Mrs. Rankin's stretcher for her."

He went.

She watched them as they walked together up the short straight road to
the battlefield at the top. Sutton followed with Alice Bartrum; then the
McClane men; they nodded to her and smiled. Then McClane, late, running,
trying to overtake John and Mrs. Rankin, to get to the head of his unit.
Perhaps he was afraid that John, in his khaki, would be mistaken for the
commandant.

How childish he was with his fear and jealousy. Childish. She thought of
his petulant refusal to let John come in with them. As if he could really
keep him out. When it came to action they _were_ one corps; they couldn't
very well be divided, since McClane had more men than stretchers and John
had more stretchers than men. They would all be infinitely happier,
working together like that, instead of standing stupidly apart, glaring
and hating.

Yet she knew what McClane and Mrs. Rankin had been playing for. McClane,
if he could, would have taken their fine Roden cars from them; he would
have taken Sutton. She knew that Mrs. Rankin would have taken John from
her, Charlotte Redhead, if she could.

And when she thought of the beautiful, arrogant woman, marching up to the
battlefield with John, she wondered whether, after all, she didn't hate
her.... No. No. It was horrible to hate a woman who at any minute might
be killed. They said McClane didn't look after his women. He didn't
care how they exposed themselves to the firing; he took them into
unnecessary danger. He didn't care. He was utterly cold, utterly
indifferent to everybody and everything except his work of getting in the
wounded.... Well, perhaps, if he had been decent to John, she wouldn't
have believed a word of it, and anyhow they hadn't come out there to be
protected.

She had a vision of John and McClane carrying Mrs. Rankin between them on
a stretcher. That was what would happen if you hated. Hat