of Ostend. Charlotte and Conway had moved close to each other. She looked
up into his face, searching his thoughts there. Suddenly from somewhere
in the bows a song spurted and dropped and spurted again and shot up in
the stillness, slender and clear, like a rod oft white water. The Belgian
boys were singing the Marseillaise. On the deck their feet beat out the
thud of the march.

Charlotte looked away.




VII


"Nothing," Charlotte said, "is going to be worse than this."

It seemed to her that they had waited hours in the huge grey hall of the
Hotel-Hospital, she and Sutton and Gwinnie, while John talked to the
President of the Red Cross in his bureau. Everybody looked at them: the
door-keeper, the lift orderly; the ward men and nurses hurrying past;
wide stares and sharp glances falling on her and Gwinnie, slanting
downward to their breeches and puttees, then darting upwards to their
English faces.

Sutton moved, putting his broad body between them and the batteries of
amused and interested eyes.

They stood close together at the foot of the staircase. Above them the
gigantic Flora leaned forward, holding out her flowers to preoccupied