knew he was
lying; that was not what he had said when he had whispered.

"You don't suppose," she said, "I should leave Mr. Conway? And if I stick
to him Gwinnie'll stick."

"And Dr. Sutton?"

"He can please himself."

"If Miss Redhead stays I shall stay."

"John will let you off like a shot, if you don't want to."

She turned to go and McClane called after her, "My offer remains open to
you three."

Through the glass door she heard Sutton saying, "If you're right,
McClane, I can't very well leave her with him, can I?"

Sutton was stupid. He didn't understand. Lying on her bed that night
Charlotte made it out.

"Gwinnie--you know why McClane won't have John?"

"I suppose because Mrs. Rankin's keen on him."

"McClane isn't keen on Mrs. Rankin.... Can't you see he's trying to hoof
John out of Belgium, because he wants all the glory to himself? We
wouldn't do that to one of them, even if we were mean enough not to want
them in it."

"He wanted Sutton."

"Oh, Sutton--He wasn't afraid of _him_.... When you think of the war--and
think of people being like that. Jealous. Hating each other--"

* * * * *

You mightn't like Mrs. Rankin, Mrs. Rankin and McClane; but you couldn't
say they weren't splendid.

Five days had passed. On the third day the McClane Corps had been sent
out. (Mrs. Rankin had not dined with the Colonel for nothing.)

It went again and again. By the fifth day they knew that it had
distinguished itself at Alost and Termonde and Quatrecht. The names
sounded in their brains like a song with an exciting, maddening refrain.
October stretched before them, golden and blank, a volume of tense,
vibrating time.

Nothing for it but to wait and wait. The summons might come any minute.
Charlotte and Gwinnie had begun by sitting on their drivers' seats in the
ambulances standing in the yard, ready to start the very instant it came.
Their orders were to hold themselves in readiness. They held themselves
in readiness and saw McClane's cars swing out from the rubbered sweep in
front of the Hospital three and four times a day. They stood on their
balcony and watched them rush along the road that led to the battlefields
southeast of the city. The sight of the flat Flemish land and the sadness
of lovely days oppressed them. She felt that it must be partly that. The
incredible loveliness of the days. They sat brooding over the map of
Belgium, marking down the names of the pla