"I don't. I only thought perhaps you wouldn't want to stay on now
he's dead."

"More than ever now he's dead. Even if I didn't want to stay I should
have to now. To make up."

"For what?"

"For what he did. All those awful things. And for what he didn't do. His
dreams. I've got to do what he dreamed. But more than anything I must pay
his debt to Belgium. To all those wounded men."

"You're not responsible for his debts, Charlotte."

"No? Sometimes I feel as if I were. As if he and I were tied up
together. I could get away from him when he was alive. But now he's dead
he's got me."

"It doesn't make him different."

"It makes _me_ different. I tell you, I can't get away from him. And I
want to. I want to cut myself loose; and this is the way."

"Isn't it the way to tie yourself tighter?"

"No. Not when it's _done_, Billy."

"I can see a much better way.... If you married me."

She turned to him, astonished and a little anxious, as though she thought
something odd and dangerous had happened to him.

"Oh, Billy, I--I couldn't do that.... What made you think of it?"

"I've been thinking of it all the time."

"All the time?"

"Well, most of the time, anyhow. But I've loved you all the time. You
know I loved you. That was why I stuck to Conway. I couldn't leave you to
him. I wouldn't even leave you to McClane."

"I didn't know."

"I should have thought it was pretty, obvious."

"It wasn't. I'd have tried to stop it if I'd known."

"You couldn't have stopped it."

"I'm sorry."

"What about?"

"That. It isn't any good. It really isn't."

"Why isn't it? I know I'm rather a queer chap. And I've got an
ugly face--"

"I love your _face_...."

She loved it, with its composure and its candour, its slightly flattened
features, laid back; its little surprised moustache, its short-sighted
eyes and its sadness.

"It's the dearest face. But--"

"I suppose," he said, "it sounds a bit startling and sudden. But if you'd
been bottling it up as long as I have--Why, I loved you the first time I
saw you. On the boat.... So you see, it's you. It isn't just anything
you've done."

"If you knew what I _have_ done, my dear. If you only knew. You wouldn't
want to marry me."

She would have to tell him. That would put him off. That would stop
him. If she had loved him she would have had to tell him, as she had
told John.

"I'm going to tell you...."

* * * * *

She wondere