"How about Gwinnie and me?"

"Gwinnie hangs her beastly legs about all over the place. So do you."

John standing at the foot of the stairs, looking at the Antwerp men.
Their heads and faces were covered with a white mask of cotton wool like
a diver's helmet, three small holes in each white mask for mouth and
eyes. They were the men whose faces had been burned by fire at Antwerp.

"Come away," she said. But he still stood, fascinated, hypnotised by the
white masks.

"If I were to stick there, doing nothing, looking at the wounded, I
should go off my head."

"My God! So should I. Those everlasting wounds. They make you dream
about them. Disgusting dreams. I never really see the wound, but I'm
just going to see it. I know it's going to be more horrible than any
wound I've ever seen. And then I wake.... That's why I don't look at
them more than I can help."

"You're looking at them now," she said.

"Oh, them. That's nothing. Cotton wool."

And she, putting her hand on his arm to draw him up the stairs, away.
John shaking her hands off and his queer voice rising. "I wish you
wouldn't do that, Charlotte. You know I hate it."