"Look here," he said. "You didn't break down. That man wasn't too heavy for you."
"He was. He was an awful weight. I couldn't have carried him a yard."
"That won't do, Charlotte. I saw you take him on your back."
She could feel the blood rising up in her face before him. He was hurting her with shame.
He persisted, merciless. "It was Conway who broke down."
She had tears now.
"Nobody knows," he said gently, "but you and me.... I want to talk to you about him. He must be got away from the Front. He must be got out of Belgium."
"You always wanted to get him away."
"Only because I saw he would break down."
"How could you tell?"
"I'm a psychotherapist. It's my business to tell."
But she was still on the defensive.
"You never liked him."
"I neither like nor dislike him. To me Conway is simply a sick man. If I could cure him--"
"Can't you?"
"Not as you think. I can't turn his cowardice into courage. I might turn it into something else but not that. That's why I say he ought to go home. You must tell him."
"I can't. Couldn't Billy tell him?"
"Well, hardly. He's his commandant."
"Can't you?"
"Not I. You know what he thinks about me."
"What?"
"That I've got a grudge against him. That I'm jealous of him. You thought it yourself."
"Did I?"
"You did. Look here, I say--I wanted to take you three into my corps. And you'd have been sent home after the Berlaere affair if I hadn't spoken for you. So much for my jealousy."
"I only thought you were jealous of John."
"Why, it was I who got him sent out that first day."
"Was it?"
"Yes. I wanted to give him his chance. And," he added meditatively, "I wanted to know whether I was right. I wanted to see what he would do."
"I don't think it now," she said, reverting.
"That's all right."
He laughed his brief, mirthless laugh, the assent of his egoism. But his satisfaction had nothing personal in it. He was pleased because justice, abstract justice, had been done. But she suspected his sincerity. He did things for you, not because he liked you, but for some other reason; and he would be so carried away by doing them that he would behave as though he liked you when he didn't, when all the time you couldn't for one minute rouse him from his immense indifference. She knew he liked her for sticking to her post and for taking the wounded man on her back, because that was the sort of thing he would have done himself. And he had only helped John because he wanted to see what he would do. Therefore she suspected his sincerity.