Does the Captain V.C. of Infantry, adored and trusted by his men, from
whose ranks he rose by reason of latent qualities of initiative command and
inspiration, contentedly return to the selling of women's stockings in his
old drapery establishment, to the vulgar tyranny of the oily shopwalker, to
the humiliating restrictions and conditions of the salesman's life? Return
he must--perhaps. He has but two trades, both of which he knows profoundly;
the selling of hosiery and the waging of war. As he can no longer wage
war, he sells hosiery. But does he do it contentedly? If his soul, through
reaction, is contented at first, will it continue to be so through the long
uneventful stocking-selling years? Will not the war change he has suffered
cause nostalgias, revolts? Will it bring into his resumed activities a new
purpose or more than the old lassitudes?

These questions were worrying me, as they were worrying most demobilized
men, although I, an elderly man about town, had no personal cause
for anxiety, when, one morning, my man brought me in the card of
Brigadier-General Lackaday. It was early March. I may mention incidentally
that I had broken down during the last wild weeks of the war, and that an
unthinkingly beneficent War Office had flung me into Nice where they had
forgotten me until a few days before.

During my stay in the South I led the lotus life of studious
self-indulgence. I lived entirely for myself and neglected my
correspondence to such a point that folks ceased to write to me. As a
matter of fact I was a very sick man, under the iron rule of doctors and
nurses and such like oppressors; but, except to explain why I had lost
touch with everybody, that is a matter of insignificant importance. The one
or two letters I did receive from Lady Auriol did not stimulate my interest
in The Romance. I gathered that she was in continuous relations with
General Lackaday, who, it appeared, was in the best of health. But when a