mplishable. Much had gone from me, yet much had
come--and it was this which had come that distorted my vision of future
days; making them drab, making my fellows who had not taken the plunge
seem purposeless and immature. Either they were out of tune, or I
was--and I thought, of course, that they were. What freshness could I
bring to an existence of peace when my gears would not mesh with its
humdrum machinery!

My mother, ever quick to detect the workings of my mind as well as the
variations of my body, had noticed these changes when I disembarked the
previous week, and had become obsessed with the idea that I stood
tottering on the brink of abysmal wretchedness. So, while I was marking
time the few days at camp until the hour of demobilization, she summoned
into hasty conference my father, our family doctor, and the select near
relatives whose advice was a matter of habit rather than value, to
devise means of leading me out of myself.

This, I afterward learned, had been a weighty conference, resulting in
the conclusion that I must have complete rest and diversion. But as my
more recent letters home had expressed a determination to rush headlong
into business--as a sort of fatuous panacea for jumpy nerves, no
doubt--and since the conferees possessed an intimate knowledge of the
mulish streak that coursed through my blood, their plans were laid
behind my back with the greatest secrecy. Therefore, when entering the
library this last night in December and hurrying to my mother's arms, I
had no suspicion that I was being drawn into a very agreeable trap,
gilded by my father's abundant generosity.

We sat late after dinner. Somewhere in the hall Bilkins hovered with
glasses and tray to be on hand when the whistles began their screaming.
In twenty years he had not omitted this New Year's Eve ceremony.

"Your wound never troubles you?" my mother asked, her solicitation over
a scratch I had received ten months before not disguising a light of
pride that charmed me.

"I've forgotten it, Mater. Never amounted to anything."

"Still, you did leave some blood on French soil," Dad spoke up, for this
conceit appealed to him.

"Enough to grow an ugly rose, perhaps," I admitted.

"I'll bet you grew pretty ones on the cheeks of those French girls," he
chuckled.

"Pretty ones don't grow any more, on cheeks or anywhere else," I
doggedly replied. "Materialism's the keynote now--that's why I'm going
back to work, at once."

"O