o
define. The Fosdicks were most certainly doing their best to make him
comfortable and happy. They were kind--yes, more than kind. Mr.
Fosdick he really began to like. Mrs. Fosdick's manner had a trace of
condescension in it, but as the lady treated all creation with much the
same measure of condescension, he was more amused than resentful. And
Madeline--Madeline was sweet and charming and beautiful. There was in
her manner toward him, or so he fancied, a slight change, perhaps a
change a trifle more marked since the evening when his expressed opinion
of "The Greater Love" had offended her and the Bacons. It seemed to
him that she was more impatient, more capricious, sometimes almost
overwhelming him with attention and tenderness and then appearing to
forget him entirely and to be quite indifferent to his thoughts and
opinions. Her moods varied greatly and there were occasions when he
found it almost impossible to please her. At these times she took
offense when no offense was intended and he found himself apologizing
when, to say the least, the fault, if there was any, was not more than
half his. But she always followed those moods with others of contrition
and penitence and then he was petted and fondled and his forgiveness
implored.

These slight changes in her he noticed, but they troubled him little,
principally because he was coming to realize the great change in
himself. More and more that change was forcing itself upon him. The
stories and novels he had read during the first years of the war,
the stories by English writers in which young men, frivolous and
inconsequential, had enlisted and fought and emerged from the ordeal
strong, purposeful and "made-over"--those stories recurred to him now.
He had paid little attention to the "making-over" idea when he read
those tales, but now he was forced to believe there might be something
in it. Certainly something, the three years or the discipline and
training and suffering, or all combined, had changed him. He was not as
he used to be. Things he liked very much he no longer liked at all. And
where, oh where, was the serene self-satisfaction which once was his?

The change must be quite individual, he decided. All soldiers were not
so affected. Take Blanchard, for instance. Blanchard had seen service,
more and quite as hard fighting as he had seen, but Blanchard was, to
all appearances, as light-hearted and serene and confident as ever.
Blanchard was like Madeline;