For a moment he stood motionless, staring into the cool shadows of the wood, while a curious smile played over his face. And may be, in spite of his derisive critic, who still croaked from the edge of the pool, his thoughts were not entirely centred on his proposed modest endeavour. Then with a short laugh he turned on his heel, and strode back towards Rumfold. Two days later he found himself once again before a Medical Board. Space, even in convalescent homes, was at a premium, and Vane, to his amazement, found himself granted a month's sick leave, at the expiration of which he was to go before yet another Board. And so having shaken hands with Lady Patterdale and suffered Sir John to explain the war to him for nearly ten minutes, Vane departed for London and Half Moon Street. He wrote Margaret a long letter in reply to hers telling him of her decision to take up medicine. He explained, what was no more than the truth, that her suggestion had taken him completely by surprise, but that if she considered that she had found her particular job he, for one, would most certainly not attempt to dissuade her. With regard to himself, however, the matter was somewhat different. At present he failed to see any budding literary signs, and his few efforts in the past had not been of the nature which led him to believe that he was likely to prove a formidable rival to Galsworthy or Arnold Bennett. . . . "I'm reading 'em all, Margaret--the whole blessed lot. And it seems to me that with the world as it is at present, bread-and-butter is wanted, not caviare. . . . But probably the mistake is entirely mine. There seems to me to be a spirit of revolt in the air, which gives one most furiously to think. Everybody distrusts everybody else; everybody wants to change--and they don't know what they want to change to. There doesn't seem to be any single connected idea as to what is wanted--or how to get it. The only thing on which everyone seems agreed is More Money and Less Work. . . . Surely to Heaven there must be a way out; some simple way out. We didn't have this sort of thing over the water. We were pals over there; but here every single soul loathes every other single soul like poison. . . . Can it be that only by going back to the primitive, as we had to do in France, can one find happiness? The idea is preposterous. . . . And, yet, now that I'm here and have been here these months, I'm longing to come back. I'm sick of it. Looking at this country with what I call my French eyes--it nauseates me. It seems so utterly petty. . . . What the devil are we fighting for? It's going to be a splendid state of affairs, isn't it, if the immediate result of beating the Boche is anarchy over here? . . . . And one feels that it oughtn't to be so; one feels that it's Gilbertian to the pitch of frenzied lunacy. You've seen those boys in hospital; I've seen 'em in the line--and they've struck me, as they have you, as God's elect. . . .