Her mind turned to them: to Gwinnie, dressed in their uniform, khaki
tunic and breeches and puttees, her fawn-coloured overcoat belted close
round her to hide her knees. Gwinnie looked stolid and good, with her
face, the face of an innocent, intelligent routing animal, stuck out
between the close wings of her motor cap and the turned-up collar of her
coat. She would go through it all right. Gwinnie was a little plodder.

She would plod through the war as she had plodded through her training,
without any fear of tests.

And Dr. Sutton. From time to time she caught him looking at her across
the deck. When Gwinnie's talk dropped he made no effort to revive it, but
stood brooding; a square, thick-set man. His head leaned forward a little
from his heavy shoulders in a perpetual short-sighted endeavour to look
closer; you could see his eyes, large and clear under the watery wash of
his glasses. His features, slightly flattened, were laid quietly back on
his composed, candid face; the dab of docked moustache rising up in it
like a strange note of wonder, of surprise.

There, he was looking at her again. But whether he looked or listened, or
stood brooding, his face kept still all the time, still and sad. His
mouth hardly moved as he spoke to Gwinnie.

She turned from him to the contemplation of their fellow passengers. The
two Belgian boy scouts in capes and tilted caps with tassels bobbing over
their foreheads; they tramped the decks, seizing attention by their gay,
excited gestures. You could see that they were happy.

The group, close by her in the stern, establishing itself there apart,
with an air of righteous possession: five, six, seven men, three young,