ections and all that foolishness."

Gorman, still heroically erect, still enormously swelled in chest,
winked at me with careful deliberation. I was immensely relieved.

"Thank God," I said. "For a moment I thought you really meant it--all
that great-council-of-the-Empire business, you know. It would have been
a horrible disappointment to me if you had. I've come to have a high
regard for you, Gorman, and I really could not have borne it. But of
course I ought to have known better. You couldn't have believed in
that stuff, simply couldn't. Nobody with your intelligence could. But
seriously, now, I should like to know--I'm sure you won't mind telling
me---- What are you going to do? Your party, I mean. It seems to me
you're in rather a hole. The Irish people will expect you to take the
regular line of backing the enemy."

"The Irish people be damned," said Gorman; "our game is to support the
Government."

CHAPTER XIX.

I look back on the time I spent soldiering--soldiering under war
conditions--as a curious blank in an otherwise interesting and amusing
life. From the day on which I rejoined my regiment until the day, about
five months later, when I escaped from the hospital in which I was
incarcerated, my mind stopped working altogether. I took no interest
whatever in any of the things which used to excite me, which are now, I
am thankful to say, beginning to amuse me again. Politicians, I believe,
pranced about with fascinating agility. I did not care to look at them.
Newspaper proprietors demanded the immediate execution of one public man
after another. I do not believe I should have cared if a guillotine
had been set up in Piccadilly Circus and a regular reign of terror
established. I lost sight of Gorman. The Aschers faded from my memory.

I spent three months or so in camp with my old regiment. I worked
exceedingly hard. I ate enormously. I slept profoundly. I attained an
almost incredible perfection of physical health. I ceased to think about
anything. My experience of the business of actual fighting was brief.
I had little more than a month of it altogether. Then they sent me home
with a shattered leg. I worked harder than ever when I was at the Front.
I was often very uncomfortable. I remained amazingly healthy. I suffered
at last a good deal of physical pain. I did not think at all, even about
the progress of the war.

I date my awakening again to the interests of life from the day when
Gorman paid