r. She would have said
he was a filthy coward and dismissed him from her mind. But John couldn't
be dismissed. His funk wasn't like other people's funk. Coupled with his
ecstatic love of danger it had an unreal, fantastic quality. Somehow she
couldn't regard his love of danger as an unreal, fantastic thing. It had
come too near her; it had moved her too profoundly and too long; she had
shared it as she might have shared his passion.

So that, even in the sharp, waking day she felt his fear as a secret,
mysterious thing. She couldn't account for it. She didn't, considering
the circumstances, she didn't judge the imminence of the Germans to be a
sufficient explanation. It was as incomprehensible to-day as it had been
yesterday.

But there was fear and fear. There was the cruel, animal fear of the
Belgians in the plantation, fear that was dark to itself and had no
sadness in it; and there was John's fear that knew itself and was sad.
The unbearable, inconsolable sadness of John's fear! After all, you could
think of him as a gentle thing, caught unaware in a trap and tortured.
And who was she to judge him? She in her "armour" and he in his coat of
nerves. His knowledge and his memory of his fear would be like a raw open
wound in his mind; and her knowledge of it would be a perpetual irritant,
rubbing against it and keeping up the sore. Last night she hadn't done
anything to heal him; she had only hurt.... And if she gave John up his
wound would never heal. She owed a sort of duty to the wound.

Of course, like John, she would go on remembering what had happened
yesterday. She would never get over it any more than he would. Yet,
after all, yesterday was only one day out of his life. There might never
be another like it. And to set against yesterday there was their first
day at Berlaere and the day afterwards at Melle; there was yesterday
morning and there was that other day at Melle. She had no business to
suppose that he had done then what he did yesterday. They had settled
that once for all at the time, when he said Billy Sutton had told him
she was going back with him. It all hung on that. If that was right, the
rest was right....

Supposing Billy hadn't told him anything of the sort, though? She would
never know that. She couldn't say to Billy: "_Did_ you tell John I was
going back with you? Because; if you didn't--" She would have to leave
that as it was, not quite certain.... And she couldn't be quite certain
wheth