here."

He was stooping to the Belgian, examining his bandages, and he didn't
answer all at once. He seemed to be meditating.

"Was he?" she repeated.

It struck her that Billy was surprised.

"Because--" She stopped there. She couldn't say to him, "I want to know
whether John left him dead or alive."

"He was dead all right." Sutton's voice came up slow and muffled out of
his meditation.

It was all right. She might have known. She might have known. Vaguely for
a moment she wondered why Billy had come for her and not John; then she
was frightened.

"Billy--John isn't hurt, is he?"

"No. Rather not. A bit done up. I made him go and lie down.... Look here,
we must get out of this."

* * * * *

The McClane Corps were gathered on their side of the messroom. They
greeted her with shouts of joy, but their eyes looked at her queerly, as
if they knew something dreadful had happened to her.

"You should have stood in with us, Charlotte," Mrs. Rankin was saying.
"Then you wouldn't get mislaid among the shells." She was whispering.
"Dr. McClane, if you took Charlotte out among the shells, would you run
away and leave her there?"

"I'd try not to."

Oh yes. He wouldn't run away and leave her. But he wouldn't care where he
took her. He wouldn't care whether a shell got her or not. But John
cared. If only she knew _why_.... Their queer faces sobered her and
suddenly she knew. She saw Sutton coming out of the house with the narrow
shutters; she heard him shouting to her, "Come on, Charlotte, hurry up!"

John must have heard him. He must really have thought that she had
gone with him.

But he must have known, too, that she wouldn't go. He must have known
that if he told her to wait for him she would wait. So that--

The voices of the McClane women ceased abruptly. One of them turned
round. Charlotte saw John standing between the glasses of the two doors.
He came in and she heard Mrs. Rankin calling out in her hard, insolent
voice, "Well, Mr. Conway, so you've got in safe."

She was always like that, hard and insolent, with her damned courage. As
if courage were ever anything more than just being decent, and as if
other people couldn't be decent too. She hated John because she couldn't
make him come to her, couldn't make him look with pleasure at her
beautiful, arrogant face. She disliked Sutton and McClane for the same
reason, but she hated John. He treated her face with a hardness