the time he argued it out with himself.
Four years wasted! But had they been wasted? What had he got out of
them anyway? Wasn't he twice the man that he had been four years ago?
Or had it all been futile and useless? . . .

No man who has been through the rapids can find his feet in an hour's
self-analysis. It takes time; and during that time much may happen,
good or ill, according to the manner of the finder. The great unrest
of the world is not felt by the men in the trenches. It seethes and
boils outside, and only when a man comes back to so-called peace does
he reach the whirlpool, which lies at the end of the rapids. Then, if
he be of the type of Vane, is the time of danger. To lose one's sense
of proportion in France is dangerous; to lose it in England may be
fatal. One has so much more freedom.

At intervals during the War Vane had sampled the whirlpool, while on
leave, and the effect it had produced in him had been transitory. The
contrast was so immense that it had failed to move him permanently.
The time that he had been in its clutches was too short. He retained
just a fleeting picture of feverish gaiety which seemed out of
perspective; of profound bores who discussed the mistakes of the Higher
Command in the arm chairs of the Club; of universal chatter concerning
rations and meat coupons. Then he had left, and in a few short hours
had been back once more in the mud holes. A good leave? Oh!
undoubtedly, just as it should have been, where the one thing necessary
was contrast. But even then it had irritated him at times to realise
how completely they failed to understand. He would not have had them
understand--true. If the alternative had been put to him; if he had
been told that it was in his power to make these people see the things
that he had seen, and hear the things that he had heard, he would not
have done so. They were better as they were--affording the contrast;
enabling men to forget.

But leave is one thing, permanence is another. And at the moment Vane
was faced with the latter. The doctor had talked airily of three or
four months, and after that in all probability a spell of light duty,
and to Vane that seemed like a permanency. It is one thing to drug
oneself in the waters of Lethe for a fortnight of one's own free will:
it is altogether different to be drugged by others for good. And dimly
he felt that either he or they would have to go under. Two totally
incompatible p