ough
without looking at any of them and out to the balcony, closing the French
window behind her. She could hide there beyond the window where the wall
was blank.

She leaned back, flattening herself against the wall....

Something would have to be done. They couldn't go on like this.... Her
mind went to and fro, quickly, with short jerky movements, distressed; it
had to do so much thinking in so short a time.

She would always have to reckon with John's fear. And John's fear was not
what she had thought it, a sad, helpless, fatal thing, sad because it
knew itself doom-like and helpless. It was cruel, with a sort of mental
violence in it, worse than the cruel animal fear of the men in the
plantation. She could see that his cowardice had something to do with his
cruelty and that his cruelty was somehow linked up with his cowardice;
but she couldn't for the life of her imagine the secret of the bond. She
only felt that it would be something secret and horrible; something that
she would rather not know about.

And she knew that since yesterday he had left off caring for her. His
love had died a sudden, cruel and violent death. His cowardice had done
that too.... And he had left off caring for the wounded. It was almost as
if he hated them, because they lay so still, keeping him back, keeping
him out under the fire.

Queer, but all those other cowardly things that he had done had seemed to
her unreal even when she had seen him doing them; and afterwards when she
thought about them they were unreal, as if they hadn't happened, as if
she had just imagined them. Incredible, and yet the sort of thing you
_could_ imagine if you tried. But that last devilish thing he did, it had
a hard, absolute reality. Just because it was inconceivable, because you
couldn't have imagined it, you couldn't doubt that it had happened.

It was happening now. As long as she lived it would go on happening in
her mind. She would never get away from it.

There were things that men did, bestial things, cruel things, things they
did to women. But not things like this. They _didn't_ think of them,
because this thing wasn't thinkable.

Why had John done it? Why? She supposed he wanted to hurt her and
frighten her because he had been hurt, because he had been frightened.
And because he knew she loved her wounded men. Perhaps he wanted to make
her hate him and have done with it.

Well, she did hate him. Oh, yes, she hated him.

She heard the wind