e could kill.

Then John and she were safe. They were lovers. Lovers. Neither of them
had ever said a word, but they owned the wonderful, immaterial fact in
secret to each other; the thought of it moved in secret behind all their
other thoughts. From the moment, just passed, when they held each other's
hands she knew that John loved her, not in a dream, not in coldness, but
with a queer unearthly ardour. He had her in his incredible, immaterial
way, a way that none of them would understand.

From the Barrow Hill Farm time? Or from yesterday? She didn't know.
Perhaps it had gone on all the time; but it would be only since yesterday
that he really knew it.

A line of soldiers marched by, going up to the battlefield. They looked
at her and smiled, a flashing of bright eyes and teeth all down the line.
When they had passed the street was deserted.

... That rattle on the stones was the firing. It had come at last. She
saw Gwinnie looking back round the corner of the hood to see what it was
like. She called to her, "Don't stick your head out, you silly cuckoo.
You'll be hit." She said to herself, If I think about it I shall feel
quite jumpy. It was one thing to go tearing along between two booming
batteries, in excitement, with an end in view, and quite another thing to
sit tight and still on a motionless car, to be fired on. A bit trying to
the nerves, she thought, if it went on long. She was glad that her car
stood next to the line of fire, sheltering Gwinnie's, and she wondered
how John was getting on up there.

The hands of the ambulance clock pointed to half-past three. They had
been waiting forty minutes, then. She got down to see if any of the
stretcher bearers were in sight.

* * * * *

They were coming back. Straggling, lurching forms. White bandages. The
wounded who could walk came first. Then the stretchers.

Alice Bartrum stopped as she passed Charlotte. The red had gone from her
sunburn, but her face was undisturbed.

"You've got to wait here," she said, "for Mr. Conway and Sutty. And
Trixie and Mac. They mayn't be back for ages. They've gone miles up
the field."

She waited.

The front cars had been loaded, had driven off and returned three times.
It was six o'clock before John appeared with Mrs. Rankin.

She heard Mrs. Rankin calling sharply to her to get down and give a hand
with the stretcher.

John and Mrs. Rankin were disputing.

_"Can't_ you shove it in at