Of course, Winterbourne had taken all this far too tragically and responsibly. The situation happened to be one which most disastrously fed his “worry” neurosis. A bitterly humorous destiny seemed intentionally to involve him in circumstances which rent his mind to pieces and exhausted his body—unnecessarily. It was a misfortune, due possibly to the fact that the initial of his name made him come towards the end of a list, that he was sent to a battalion so raggedly composed and so naggingly commanded. We passed out almost together at the Cadet School, but where everything ran comparatively easily and smoothly for me, all went wrong with him. He brooded incessantly and saw all things in terms of the bleakest despair—the collapse of his own life, his present situation, the continued retirement of the Allied Armies which seemed to promise an indefinite continuation of the War, his feeling that even if he came out alive he would never be able to re-build his life. It was unlucky to go straight back to M——, which had such tragic associations for him and made it doubly hard to repress shell-shocked nerves. His state of mind, what with sleeplessness and worry and shock and ague, which came back as soon as he was in the line again, and physical exhaustion and inhibited fear, almost fringed dementia, and he would have collapsed but for his strength of will and pride. But he was a wrecked man, swept along in the swirling cataracts of the War. * * * * *