as it would keep the others from knowing, so long as John's awfulness
went beyond their knowledge, so long as it would do any good to John, she
would lie.

Her time had come. She remembered saying that. She could hear herself
talking to John at Barrow Hill Farm: "Everybody's got their breaking
point.... I daresay when my time comes I shall funk and lie."

Well, didn't she? Funk--the everlasting funk of wondering what John would
do next; and lying, lying at every turn to save him. _He_ was her
breaking point.

She had lied, the first time they went out, about the firing. She
wondered whether she had done it because then, even then, she had been
afraid of his fear. Hadn't she always somehow, in secret, been afraid?
She could see the car coming round the corner by the Church in the narrow
street at Stow, she could feel it grazing her thigh, and John letting her
go, jumping safe to the curb. She had pretended that it hadn't happened.

But that first day--No. He had been brave then. She had only lied because
she was afraid he would worry about her.... Brave then. Could war tire
you and wear you down, and change you from yourself? In two weeks? Change
him so that she had to hate him!

Half the night she lay awake wondering: Do I hate him because he doesn't
care about me? Or because he doesn't care about the wounded? She could
see all their faces: the face of the wounded man at Melle (_he_ had
crawled out on his hands and knees to look for her); the face of the dead
boy who hadn't died when John left him; the Flamand they brought from
Lokeren, lying in the road; the face of the dead man in the shed--And