I had just enough morality left to play fair
with Mrs. Lambert. I did try to find her, so that she shouldn't miss it.
Somebody said she was in one of the restaurants on the _Place_ with her
husband. I looked in all the restaurants and she wasn't in one of them.
The finger of Heaven pointed unmistakably to the Secretary and Reporter.

There was a delay of ten minutes, no more, while I got some cake and
sandwiches for the hungry chauffeurs and took them to the bureau to have
their brassards stamped. And in every minute of the ten I suffered
tortures while we waited. I thought something _must_ happen to prevent
my taking that ambulance car out. I thought my heart would leave off
beating and I should die before we started (I believe people feel like
this sometimes before their wedding night). I thought the Commandant
would come back and send out Ursula Dearmer instead. I thought the
Military Power would come down from its secret hiding-place and stop me.
But none of these things happened. At the last moment, I thought that M.
C----

M. C---- was the Belgian Red Cross guide who took us into Antwerp. To M.
C---- I said simply and firmly that I was going. The functions of the
Secretary and Reporter had never been very clearly defined, and this
was certainly not the moment to define them. M. C----, in his innocence,
accepted me with confidence and a chivalrous gravity that left nothing
to be desired.

The chauffeur Newlands (the leaner and darker one) declared himself
ready for anything. All he wanted was to get to work. Poor Ascot, who
was so like my friend the editor, had to be content with his vigil in
the back yard.

At last we got off. I might have trusted Heaven. The getting off was a
foregone conclusion, for we went along the south-east road, which had
not worked its mysterious fascination for nothing.

At a fork where two roads go into Ghent we saw one of our old ambulance
cars dashing into Ghent down the other road on our left. It was beyond
hail. Heaven _meant_ us to go on uninterrupted and unchallenged.

I had not allowed for trouble at the barrier. There always is a barrier,
which may be anything from a mile to four miles from the field or
village where the wounded are. Yesterday on the way to Lokeren the
barrier was at Z----. To-day it was somewhere half-way between Ghent and
Melle.

None of us had ever quite got to the bottom of the trouble at the
barrier. We know that the Belgian authorities wisely refus