wouldn't fall.

"It won't fall because it isn't a fortified city," she objected. "But
it'll surrender. It'll have to."

"It won't. If the Germans come anywhere near we shall drive them back."

"They _are_ near. They're all round in a ring with only a little narrow
opening up _there_. And the ring's getting closer."

"It's easier to push back a narrow ring than a wide one."

"It's easier to break through a thin ring than a thick one, and who's
going to push?"

"We are. The British. We'll come pouring in, hundreds of thousands of us,
through that little narrow opening up there."

"If we only would--"

"Of course we shall. If I thought we wouldn't, if I thought we were going
to let the Belgians down, if we _betrayed_ them--My God! I'd kill
myself.... No. No, I wouldn't. That wouldn't hurt enough. I'd give up my
damned country and be a naturalized Belgian. Why, they trust us. They
_trust_ us to save Antwerp."

"If we don't, that wouldn't be betrayal."

"It would. The worst kind. It would be like betraying a wounded man; or a
woman. Like me betraying you, Jeanne. You needn't look like that. It's so
bad that it can't happen."

Through the enveloping sadness she felt a prick of joy, seeing him so
valiant, so unbeaten in his soul. It supported her certainty. His soul
was so big that nothing could satisfy it but the big thing, the big
dangerous thing. He wouldn't even believe that Antwerp was falling.

* * * * *

She knew. She knew. There was not the smallest doubt about it any more.
She saw it happen.

It happened in the village near Lokeren, the village whose name she
couldn't remember. The Germans had taken Lokeren that morning; they were
_in_ Lokeren. At any minute they might be in the village.

You had to pass through a little town to get to it. And there they had
been told that they must not go on. And they had gone on. And in the
village they were told that they must go back and they had not gone back.
They had been given five minutes to get in their wounded and they had
been there three-quarters of an hour, she and John working together, and
Trixie Rankin with McClane and two of his men.

Charlotte had been sorry for Sutton and Gwinnie and the rest of McClane's
corps who had not come out with them to this new place, but had been sent
back again to Melle where things had been so quiet all morning that they
hadn't filled their ambulances, and half of them had hung about doi