pose that's how it was."

She shook her head. He was darker to her than ever and she was no nearer
to her peace. She knew everything and she understood nothing. And that
was worse than not knowing.

"If only I could understand. Then, I believe, I could bear it. I wouldn't
care how bad it was as long as I understood."

"Ask McClane, then. He could explain it to you. It's beyond me."

"McClane?"

"He's a psychotherapist. He knows more about people's souls than I know
about their bodies. He probably knows all about Conway's soul."

Silence drifted between them, dim and silvery like the garden mist.

"Charlotte--are we never to get away from him? Is he always to stick
between us? That dead man."

"It isn't that."

"What is it, then?"

"All _this_.... I'd give anything to care for you, Billy dear, but I
don't care. I _can't_. I can't care for anything but the war."

"The war won't last for ever. And afterwards?"

"I can't see any afterwards."

Sutton smiled.

"And yet," he said, "there will be one."

XVII

The boat went steadily, cutting the waves with its sound like the flowing
of stiff silk.

Charlotte and Sutton and McClane, stranded at Dunkirk on their way to
England, had been taken on board the naval transport _Victoria_. They
were the only passengers besides some young soldiers, and these had left
them a clear space on the deck. Charlotte was sitting by herself under
the lee of a cabin when McClane came to her there.

He was straddling and rubbing his hands. Something had pleased him.

"I knew," he said, "that some day I should get you three. And that I
should get those ambulances."

She couldn't tell whether he meant that he always got what he wanted
or that he had foreseen John Conway's fate which would ultimately
give it him.

"The ambulances--Yes. You always wanted them."

"Not more than I wanted you and Sutton."

He seemed aware of her secret antagonism, yet without resentment,
waiting till it had died down before he spoke again. He was sitting
beside her now.

"What are you going to do about Conway?"

"Nothing. Except lie about him to his father."

"That's all right as long as you don't lie about him to yourself."

"I've lied about him to other people. Never to myself. I was in love with
him, if that's what you mean. But he finished that. What's finished is
finished. I haven't a scrap of feeling for him left."

"Are you quite sure?"

"Quite. I'm not even sorry he's d