She talked; but her thoughts ran by themselves on a line separate from her speech.

"We got in six wounded." ... "That curé was there again. He was splendid." ... They didn't know anything. They condemned him on the evidence of her face, the face she had brought back to them, coming straight from John. Her face had the mark of what he had done to her.... "Much firing? Not so very much." ... She remembered what he had said to her about her face. "Something's happened to it. Some cruelty. Some damnable cruelty...."

"We'll have to go out there again."

They were all listening, and Alice Bartrum had made fresh tea for her; McClane was setting down her cup. She was thirsty; she longed for the fresh, fragrant tea; she was soothed by the kind, listening faces. Suddenly they drew away; they weren't listening any more. John had come into the room.

It flashed on her that all these people thought that John was her lover, her lover in the way they understood love. They were looking at him as if they hated him. But John's face was quiet and composed and somehow triumphant; it held itself up against all the hostile faces; it fronted McClane and his men as their equal; it was the face of a man who has satisfied a lust. His whole body had a look of assurance and accomplishment, as if his cruelty had given him power.

And with it all he kept his dreadful beauty. It hurt her to look at him.

She rose, leaving her tea untasted, and went out of the room. She couldn't sit there with him. She had given him up. Her horror of him was pure, absolute. It would never return on itself to know pity or remorse.




Most Popular