said to any other woman.

It was inconceivable that he--It couldn't have happened. As he had said
of the defeat of Belgium, it was so bad that it couldn't happen. Odd,
that the other day she had accepted at once a thing she didn't know for
certain, while now she fought fiercely against a thing she knew; and
always the memory of it, returning, beat her down.

She had to make up her mind on what terms she would live with it and
whether she would live with it at all. Supposing it happened again?
Supposing you had always to go in fear of its happening?... It mightn't
happen. Funk might be a thing that attacked you like an illness, or like
drink, in fits, with long, calm intervals between. She wondered what it
would feel like to be subject to attacks. Perhaps you would recover; you
would be on the look-out, and when you felt another fit coming on you
could stave it off or fight it down. And the first time wouldn't count
because you had had no warning. It wouldn't be fair to give him up
because of the first time.

He would have given her up, he would have left her to the Germans--Yes;
but if she broke with him now she would never get beyond that thought,
she would never get beyond yesterday; she would always see it, the
flagged road swinging with the swinging bulge of the stretcher, the
sudden stopping, the Flamand with his wound, the shafts of the stretcher,
suddenly naked, sticking out; and then all the fantastic, incredible
movements of John's flight. Her mind would separate from him on that,
closing everything down, making his act eternal.

And, after all, the Germans hadn't come round the corner. Perhaps he
wouldn't have left her if they had really come. How did she know what he