When his turn came for going home three years had elapsed. London and his club claimed him for his spells of his short leave, for there was still much work to be done with his regiment. When he began to tire of the long round of work and distractions he commenced to think seriously of a visit to America. His experience of the war had sobered him down. He was now thirty-two years of age, the time when most men, who have not arrived there already, think seriously of settling down to matrimony. In other respects he wanted to be free. He was tired of obeying orders; even of giving them. The war was over and Britain was at peace with the world. Had there been still fighting going on anywhere such thought would not have occurred to him; he would still have wanted to be in the thick of it. But the long months of waiting and inactivity, the endless routine, the impossibility of doing anything which would have an immediate effect; all these things had worn out much of his patience, and stirred the natural restlessness of his disposition. At home there seemed no prospect of following soldiering in the way he wished: some form in which excitement had a part. Indeed the whole scheme of War and Army seemed to be shaping themselves on lines unfamiliar to him. The idea of the old devil-may-care life which had first attracted him and of which he had had a taste did not any longer exist, or, if it existed it was not for him. Outside actual fighting the life of a soldier was not now to consist of a series of seasonable amusements. And even if it did the very routine of amusements not only did not satisfy him, but became irksome. What, after all, he thought, was to a grown man a life of games in succession. Polo and cricket, fishing, shooting, hunting in due course; racquets and tennis, yachting and racing were all very well individually. But they did not seem to lead anywhere. In fact such pastimes now seemed inadequate to a man who had been actively taking a part in the biggest game of them all, war! When once the idea had come to him it never left him. Each new disappointment, the unfulfilled expectation of interest, drove it further and further home. There was everywhere a lack of his old companions; always a crowd of new faces. The girls he had known and liked because they were likable, had got married within the few years of his absence. The matrons had made fresh companionships which held possession. Bridge had arisen as a new society fetish which drew to itself the interests and time of all. A new order of “South African Millionaires” had arisen who by their wealth and extravagance had set at defiance the old order of social caste, and largely changed the whole scheme of existing values.