ead."

"You've forgiven him?"

"I'm not always sure about that. But I'm trying to forget him."

McClane looked away.

"Do you ever dream about him, Charlotte?"

"Never. Not now. I used to. I dreamed about him once three nights
running."

He looked at her sharply. "Could you tell me what you dreamed?"

She told him her three dreams.

"You don't suppose they meant anything?" she said.

"I do. They meant that part of you was kicking. It knew all the time what
he was like and was trying to warn you."

"To keep me off him?"

"To keep you off him."

"I see.... The middle one was funny. It _happened_. The day we were in
Bruges. But I can't make out the first one with that awful woman in it."

"You may have been dreaming something out of his past. Something he
remembered."

"Well anyhow I don't understand the last one."

"_I_ do."

"But I dreamed he wanted me. Frightfully. And he didn't."

"He did. He wanted you--'frightfully'--all the time. He went to pieces if
you weren't there. Don't you know why he took you out with him
everywhere? Because if he hadn't he couldn't have driven half a mile out
of Ghent."

"That's one of the things I'm trying to forget."

"It's one of the things you should try to remember."

He grasped her arm.

"And, Charlotte, look here. I want you to forgive him. For your
own sake."

She stiffened under his touch, his look, his voice of firm, intimate
authority. His insincerity repelled her.

"Why should you? You don't care about him. You don't care about me. If I
was blown to bits to-morrow you wouldn't care."

He laughed his mirthless, assenting laugh.

"You don't care about people at all. You only care about their diseases
and their minds and things."

"I think I care a little about the wounded."

"You don't really. Not about _them_. You care about getting in more of
them and quicker than any other field ambulance on the front. I can't
think why you're bothering about me now."

"That's why. If I'm to get in more wounded I can't have anybody in my
corps who isn't fit."

"_I'm_ fit. What's the matter with me?"

"Not much. Your body's all right. And your mind _was_ all right till
Conway upset it. Now it's unbalanced."

"Unbalanced?"

"Just the least little bit. There's a fight going on in it between your
feeling for Conway and your knowledge of him."

"I've told you I haven't any feeling."

"Your memory of your feeling then. Same thing. You know he was cruel an