What if she should begin to be afraid? There was nothing she had got to do with her hands; there was nothing she had got to do with her brain; and sleep was forbidden. It was the hardest thing in the world to control your thoughts when you were awake and idle, she had written Adelaide. What if one of the German aeroplanes should see her! What if one of the German guns got its range on her! She shook herself a little and buttoned her coat up close about her neck. Glanced at her watch. Only ten minutes since Ellen had gone! She wished Ellen was there—or somebody (a child would have done) who expected her to be self-controlled.
There was a cellar a hundred yards back on the road. She had passed it as she came along with Ellen—a safe retreat where she might crouch without being seen, if only there had been but one road to watch. As it was there were three roads along which refugees might arrive at the junction where she had been placed. She couldn't consider the cellar. She mustn't even think of it, or it would draw her, she feared, like a magnet a powerless needle. She turned her back resolutely towards it.
It was not until after Constance had directed her first troop of soldiers away from danger that her fear of being afraid let go for a moment its
