or more volunteers. They
could get all the volunteers they wanted afterwards; and all the cars,
his father would send out any number. She suspected John of not really
wanting the volunteers, of not even wanting Gwinnie and Dr. Sutton. She
could see he would have liked to have gone with her alone. Queer, that so
long as she had thought he would be going without her, she had been
afraid; she had felt certain he would be killed or die of wounds. The one
unbearable thing was that John should die. But after it had been settled
that she was to go with him as his chauffeur she hadn't been afraid any
more. It was as if she knew that she would keep him safe. Or perhaps all
the time she had been afraid of something else. Of separation. She had
had visions of John without her in another country; they were coloured,
vaguely, with the horror of her dreams. It had been just that. Anyhow,
she hadn't thought any more about John's dying.

It was the old man, his father, who had made her think of it now.

She could see him, the grey, kind, silent man, at the last minute,
standing on the quay and looking at John with a queer, tight look as
though he were sorry about something--oh, but unbearably sorry about
something he'd thought or said or done. He was keeping it all in, it was
a thing he couldn't speak about, but you could see it made him think John
wasn't coming back again.

He had got it into his head that she was going out because of John.
She remembered, before that, his kind, funny look at her when he said
to John, "Mind you take care of her," and John's "No fear," and her
own "That's not what he's going out for." She had a slight pang when
she thought of John's father. He had been good to Gwinnie and to her
at Coventry.

But as for going out because of John, whether he went or not she would
have had to go, so keen that she hated those seven weeks at Coventry,
although John had been there.

With every thud of the engines her impatience was appeased.

And all the time she could hear Gwinnie's light, cool voice explaining to
Dr. Sutton that the British Red Cross wouldn't look at them and their
field ambulance, but the Belgians, poor things, you know, weren't in a
position to refuse. They would have taken almost anything.

Her mind turned to them: to Gwinnie, dressed in their uniform, khaki
tunic and breeches and puttees, her fawn-coloured overcoat belted close
round her to hide her knees. Gwinnie looked stolid and good, with h