“What else can I do?  I should have come out if John hadn’t.  Of course I was glad we could go together, but you mustn’t suppose I only went because of him.”

“I don’t.  I only thought perhaps you wouldn’t want to stay on now he’s dead.”

“More than ever now he’s dead.  Even if I didn’t want to stay I should have to now.  To make up.”

“For what?”

“For what he did.  All those awful things.  And for what he didn’t do.  His dreams.  I’ve got to do what he dreamed.  But more than anything I must pay his debt to Belgium.  To all those wounded men.”

“You’re not responsible for his debts, Charlotte.”

“No?  Sometimes I feel as if I were.  As if he and I were tied up together.  I could get away from him when he was alive.  But now he’s dead he’s got me.”

“It doesn’t make him different.”

“It makes me different.  I tell you, I can’t get away from him.  And I want to.  I want to cut myself loose; and this is the way.”

“Isn’t it the way to tie yourself tighter?”

“No.  Not when it’s done, Billy.”

“I can see a much better way....  If you married me.”

She turned to him, astonished and a little anxious, as though she thought something odd and dangerous had happened to him.

“Oh, Billy, I—­I couldn’t do that....  What made you think of it?”

“I’ve been thinking of it all the time.”

“All the time?”

“Well, most of the time, anyhow.  But I’ve loved you all the time.  You know I loved you.  That was why I stuck to Conway.  I couldn’t leave you to him.  I wouldn’t even leave you to McClane.”

“I didn’t know.”

“I should have thought it was pretty, obvious.”

“It wasn’t.  I’d have tried to stop it if I’d known.”

“You couldn’t have stopped it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What about?”

“That.  It isn’t any good.  It really isn’t.”

“Why isn’t it?  I know I’m rather a queer chap.  And I’ve got an ugly face—­”

“I love your face....”

She loved it, with its composure and its candour, its slightly flattened features, laid back; its little surprised moustache, its short-sighted eyes and its sadness.

“It’s the dearest face.  But—­”

“I suppose,” he said, “it sounds a bit startling and sudden.  But if you’d been bottling it up as long as I have—­Why, I loved you the first time I saw you.  On the boat....  So you see, it’s you.  It isn’t just anything you’ve done.”

“If you knew what I have done, my dear.  If you only knew.  You wouldn’t want to marry me.”

She would have to tell him.  That would put him off.  That would stop him.  If she had loved him she would have had to tell him, as she had told John.

“I’m going to tell you....”

* * * * *

She wondered whether he had really listened.  A queer smile played about his mouth.  He looked as if he had been thinking of something else all the time.