* * * * * The McClane Corps were gathered on their side of the messroom. They greeted her with shouts of joy, but their eyes looked at her queerly, as if they knew something dreadful had happened to her. "You should have stood in with us, Charlotte," Mrs. Rankin was saying. "Then you wouldn't get mislaid among the shells." She was whispering. "Dr. McClane, if you took Charlotte out among the shells, would you run away and leave her there?" "I'd try not to." Oh yes. He wouldn't run away and leave her. But he wouldn't care where he took her. He wouldn't care whether a shell got her or not. But John cared. If only she knew _why_.... Their queer faces sobered her and suddenly she knew. She saw Sutton coming out of the house with the narrow shutters; she heard him shouting to her, "Come on, Charlotte, hurry up!" John must have heard him. He must really have thought that she had gone with him. But he must have known, too, that she wouldn't go. He must have known that if he told her to wait for him she would wait. So that-- The voices of the McClane women ceased abruptly. One of them turned round. Charlotte saw John standing between the glasses of the two doors. He came in and she heard Mrs. Rankin calling out in her hard, insolent voice, "Well, Mr. Conway, so you've got in safe." She was always like that, hard and insolent, with her damned courage. As if courage were ever anything more than just being decent, and as if other people couldn't be decent too. She hated John because she couldn't make him come to her, couldn't make him look with pleasure at her beautiful, arrogant face. She disliked Sutton and McClane for the same reason, but she hated John. He treated her face with a hardness and insolence like her own. You could see her waiting for her revenge, watching every minute for a chance to stick her blade into him. He was pretending that he hadn't heard her. His hair stood up in pointed tufts, rumpled from his pillow. His eyes had a dazed, stupid look as if he were not perfectly awake. But at the sound of the rasping voice his mouth had tightened; it was pinched and sharp with pain. He didn't look at Mrs. Rankin. He came to her, Charlotte Redhead, straight; straight as if she had drawn him from his sleep. The McClane people got up, one after another, and went out. "Charlotte," he said, "did you really think I'd left you?" "I thought you'd left me. But I knew you hadn't." "You _knew_ it wasn't possible?" "Yes. Inside me I knew." "I'm awfully sorry. Sutton told me you were going on with him, and I thought you'd gone." XI She would remember for ever the talk they had on the balcony that day while Antwerp was falling.