n.

She stooped down and turned him over on his chest. Then, with great
difficulty, she got him up on to his feet; she took him by the wrists
and, stooping again, swung him on to her shoulder. These acts, requiring
attention and drawing on all her energy, dulled the pain of her
knowledge. When she stood up with him she saw John and McClane coming to
her. She lowered her man gently back on to the stretcher.

The Flamand, thinking that she had given it up and that he was now
abandoned to the Germans, groaned.

"It's all right," she said. "He's coming."

She saw McClane holding John by the arm, and in her pain there was a
sharper pang. She had the illusion of his being dragged back unwillingly.

McClane smiled as he came to her. He glanced at the Flamand lying heaped
on his stretcher.

"He's been too much for you, has he?"

"Too much--? Yes."

Instantly she saw that John had lied, and instantly she backed his lie.
She hated McClane thinking she had failed; but anything was better than
his knowing the truth.

John and McClane picked up the stretcher and went on quickly. Charlotte
walked beside the Flamand with her hand on his shoulder to comfort him.
Again her pity was like love.

From the top of the village she could see the opening of the lane. Down
there was the house with the tall green door where the dead man was. John
had _said_ he was dead.

Supposing he wasn't? Or supposing he was still warm and limp like the boy
at Melle? She must know; it was a thing she must know for certain, or she
would never have any peace. And when the Flamand was laid out on
McClane's table, while McClane dressed his wound, she slipped down the
lane and opened the green door.

The man lay on a row of packing cases with his feet parted. She put one
hand over his heart and the other on his forehead under the lock of
bloodstained hair. He was dead: stiff dead and cold. His tunic and shirt
had been unbuttoned to ease his last breathing. She had a queer baffled
feeling of surprise and incompleteness, as if some awful sense in her
would have been satisfied if she had seen that he had been living when
John had said that he was dead. To-day would then have been linked on
firmly to the other day.

John stood at the top of the lane. He scowled at her as she came.

"What do you think you're doing!" he said.

"I went to that house--to see if the man was dead."

"You'd no business to. I told you he was dead."

"I wanted to make sure