the men in the plantation. She could see it in his
retreating eyes.

She cried out--her voice sounded sharp and strange--"John--! You _can't_
leave him."

The wounded man who had lain inert, thinking that they were only resting,
now turned his head at her cry. She saw his eyes shaking, palpitating
with terror.

"You've frightened him," she said. "I won't have him frightened."

She didn't really believe that John was going. He went slowly, still
ashamed, and stopped again and waited for her.

"Come back," she said, "this minute, and pick up that stretcher
and get on."

"I tell you it isn't good enough."

"Oh, go then, if you're such a damned coward, and send Mac to me.
Or Trixie."

"They'll have gone."

He was walking backwards, his face set towards the turn of the road.

"Come on, you little fool. You can't carry him."

"I can. And I shall, if Mac doesn't come."

"You'll be taken," he shouted.

"I don't care. If I'm taken, I'm taken. I shall carry him on my back."

While John still went backwards she thought: It's all right. If he sees
I'm not coming he won't go. He'll come back to the stretcher.

But John had turned and was running.

Even then she didn't realise that he was running away, that she was left
there with the wounded man. Things didn't happen like that. People ran
away all of a sudden, in panics, because they couldn't help it; they
didn't begin by going slowly and stopping to argue and turning round and
walking backwards; they were gone before they knew where they were. She
believed that he was going for the ambulance. One moment she believed it
and the next she knew better. As she waited in the road (conscious of the
turn, the turn with its curving screen of tall trees) her knowledge, her
dreadful knowledge, came to her, dark and evil, creeping up and up. John
wasn't coming back. He would no more come back than he had come back the
other day. Sutton had come. The other day had been like to-day. John was
like that.

Her mind stood still in amazement, seeing, seeing clearly, what John was
like. For a moment she forgot about the Germans.

She thought: I don't believe Mac's gone. He wouldn't go until he'd got
them all in. Mac would come.

Then she thought about the Germans again. All this was making it much
more dangerous for Mac and everybody, with the Germans coming round the
corner any minute; she had no business to stand there thinking; she must
pick that man up on her back and go o