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She turned, but he had put himself between her and the door She wrenched at the latch, sobbing

"How could you be so cruel? What did you do it for? What did you do it for?"

"I wanted you to see what they've done with him There's his clean bed They haven't even taken his boots off"

"You brute You utter brute!"

A steely sound like a dropped ha of a latch John opened the door a little way and she slipped out past him

"Next time," he said, "perhaps you'll do as you're told"

She wanted to get away by herself Not into her own roo aht, now rested The McClane Corps was crowding into theat any of the the Frenchbehind her She could hide there beyond the here the as blank

She leaned back, flattening herself against the wall

Soo on like this Her mind went to and fro, quickly, with short jerkyin so short a time

She would always have to reckon with John's fear And John's fear was not what she had thought it, a sad, helpless, fatal thing, sad because it knew itself doom-like and helpless It was cruel, with a sort of mental violence in it, worse than the cruel animal fear of the men in the plantation She could see that his cowardice had so to do with his cruelty and that his cruelty was somehow linked up with his cowardice; but she couldn't for the life of her iine the secret of the bond She only felt that it would be so that she would rather not know about

And she knew that since yesterday he had left off caring for her His love had died a sudden, cruel and violent death His cowardice had done that too And he had left off caring for the wounded It was al hi him out under the fire

Queer, but all those other cowardly things that he had done had see theht about them they were unreal, as if they hadn't happened, as if she had just i you could i he did, it had a hard, absolute reality Just because it was inconceivable, because you couldn't have iined it, you couldn't doubt that it had happened