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She saw Gwinnie looking back round the corner of the hood to see what it was like. She called to her, "Don't stick your head out, you silly cuckoo. You'll be hit." She said to herself, If I think about it I shall feel quite jumpy.
It's the end that's rotten. The really awful thing was Effie." "Look here " Gwinnie left off rocking and swung herself to the edge of the bed. Her face looked suddenly mature and full of wisdom. "I don't believe in that Effie business. You want to think you stopped it because of Effie; but you didn't. You've got to see it straight.... It was his lying and funking that finished you.
He had got it into his head that she was going out because of John. She remembered, before that, his kind, funny look at her when he said to John, "Mind you take care of her," and John's "No fear," and her own "That's not what he's going out for." She had a slight pang when she thought of John's father. He had been good to Gwinnie and to her at Coventry.
Gwinnie looked stolid and good, with her face, the face of an innocent, intelligent routing animal, stuck out between the close wings of her motor cap and the turned-up collar of her coat. She would go through it all right. Gwinnie was a little plodder. She would plod through the war as she had plodded through her training, without any fear of tests. And Dr. Sutton.
Gwinnie laughed. "It won't unless Charlotte dines with the Colonel." "It certainly mayn't," said Charlotte. "They may commandeer our cars and give them to McClane." "They can't," said Gwinnie. "We're volunteers." "They can do anything they choose. Military necessity." Gwinnie was thoughtful. "John," she said, "can I have one of the cars to-morrow afternoon?" "What for?" "Never mind. Can I?"
I tell you it's not what you think about him, it's what I think." "Yes," said Alice Bartrum. Then Gwinnie Denning and John Conway came in and she left them. John carried himself very straight, and again Charlotte saw about him that odd look of accomplishment and satisfaction. "So you got through?" he said. "Yes. I got through." They kept their eyes from each other as they spoke.
He fixed on the two things you can't stand." The two things. The two things. "I know what you want. You want to kill him in my mind, so that I shan't think of him any more. I'm not thinking. I only wanted you to know." "Does anybody else know?" She shook her head. "Well don't you let them." Gwinnie slid to her feet and went to the looking-glass.
"You can have both the damned things if you like; they're no good to me." The next afternoon they looked on while Gwinnie, who wore a look of great wisdom and mystery, slipped her car out of the yard into a side street and headed for the town. She came back at tea-time, bright-eyed and faintly flushed. "You'll find we shall be sent out to-morrow." "Oh, shall we!" John said. "Yes.
Nothing mattered when your body was light and hard and you could feel the ripple and thrill of the muscles in your stride. She wouldn't have to think of him again. She wouldn't have to think of any other man. She didn't want any more of that again, ever. She could go on and on like this, by herself, without even Gwinnie; not caring a damn. If she had been cruel if she had wanted to hurt Effie.
A black iron curtain crashed down before her and cut off the dream. Gwinnie looked up over the crook of her knee from the boot she was lacing. "You made no end of a row in your sleep, Sharlie." She had dreamed about him again, the next night. He was walking with her on the road from the town to the Farm. By the lime kiln at the turn he disappeared. He had never been there, really.
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