It didn't matter so much his forgetting her. The awful thing was his forgetting the wounded man. How could you forget a wounded man? When she remembered the Belgian's terrified hare's eyes she hated John.
And, as she sat there supporting his head with her shoulder, she thought again. There must have been a wounded man in the house John had come out of. Was it possible that he had forgotten him, too?... He hadn't forgotten. She could see him looking back over his shoulder; looking at something that was lying there, that couldn't be anything but a wounded man. Or a dead man. Whatever it was, it had been the last thing he had seen; the last thing he had thought of before he made his dash. It wasn't possible that he had left a wounded man in there, alive. It was not possible.
And all the time while she kept on telling herself that it was not possible she saw a wounded man in the room John had left; she saw his head turning to the doorway, and his eyes, frightened; she felt his anguish in the moment that he knew himself abandoned. Not forgotten. Abandoned.
She would have to go over to the house and see. She must know whether the man was there or not there. She raised the Belgian's head, gently, from her shoulder. She would have to wake him and tell him what she was going to do, so that he mightn't think she had left him and be frightened.
But the Belgian roused himself to a sudden virile determination. Mademoiselle must not cross the road. It was too dangerous. Mademoiselle would be hit. He played on her pity with an innocent, cunning cajolery. "Mademoiselle must not leave me. I do not want to be left."
"Only for one minute. One little minute. I think there's a wounded man, like you, Monsieur, in that house."
"Ah--h--A wounded man?" He seemed to acknowledge the integrity of her purpose. "If only I were not wounded, if only I could crawl an inch, I would go instead of Mademoiselle."
* * * * *
The wounded man lay on the floor of the room in his corner by the fireplace where John had left him. His coat was rolled up under his head for a pillow. He lay on his side, with humped hips and knees drawn up, and one hand, half clenched, half relaxed, on his breast under the drooped chin; so that at first she thought he was alive, sleeping. She knelt down beside him and clasped his wrist; she unbuttoned his tunic and put in her hand under his shirt above the point of his heart. He was certainly dead. No pulse; no beat; no sign of breathing. Yet his body was warm still, and limp as if with sleep. He couldn't have been dead very long.