decision about that. If Billy Sutton had done it, or one of McClane's
chauffeurs, her decision would have been very clear. She would have said
he was a filthy coward and dismissed him from her mind. But John couldn't
be dismissed. His funk wasn't like other people's funk. Coupled with his
ecstatic love of danger it had an unreal, fantastic quality. Somehow she
couldn't regard his love of danger as an unreal, fantastic thing. It had
come too near her; it had moved her too profoundly and too long; she had
shared it as she might have shared his passion.

So that, even in the sharp, waking day she felt his fear as a secret,
mysterious thing. She couldn't account for it. She didn't, considering
the circumstances, she didn't judge the imminence of the Germans to be a
sufficient explanation. It was as incomprehensible to-day as it had been
yesterday.

But there was fear and fear. There was the cruel, animal fear of the
Belgians in the plantation, fear that was dark to itself and had no
sadness in it; and there was John's fear that knew itself and was sad.
The unbearable, inconsolable sadness of John's fear! After all, you could
think of him as a gentle thing, caught unaware in a trap and tortured.
And who was she to judge him? She in her "armour" and he in his coat of
nerves. His knowledge and his memory of his fear would be like a raw open
wound in his mind; and her knowledge of it would be a perpetual irritant,
rubbing against it and keeping up the sore. Last night she hadn't done
anything to heal him; she had only hurt.... And if she gave John up his
wound would never heal. She owed a sort of duty to the wound.

Of course, like John, she would go on remembering what had happened
yesterday. She would never get over it any more than he would. Yet,
after all, yesterday was only one day out of his life. There might never