But at that, Patricia’s anger vanished: for intuition, and her own love for Peter, told her clearly that “literature” was not the one thing in the world for which Francis Gordon most cared. She remembered the photograph incident at Mecklinburgh Square, the postcard she had read unwittingly at Brighton, his look when she chaffed him about being in love at the end of her Christmas Eve visit to Endsleigh Gardens. Her curiosity itched to ask him about this mysterious girl in America. Why didn’t he marry her? Or was she already married? Wouldn’t she have anything to do with him? Had they quarrelled? Couldn’t they make it up? . . . But Francis, during his stay at Sunflowers, repelled every attempt to extract confidences; kept conversation rigidly to the impersonal. Somehow, he frightened Patricia. It seemed to her as though he had lost all interest in life. Except for his own writing-room, he left all arrangements at Glen Cottage to Prout. The war, he never mentioned: “as far as I’m concerned,” he said, “it’s over.” Literature, he referred to contemptuously as “the last resource of people who hadn’t the capacity for doing real things.” Even the children noticed this change. “What’s the matter with Uncle Francis?” asked Evelyn, now a precocious long-legged creature of eight. “He always used to talk such a lot, and now he hardly talks at all.” “He’s got a bad leg, dear,” explained her mother. “But he doesn’t talk with his leg, Mummy,” put in precocity; and Patricia was driven to the usual: “Go on with your lessons, darling. Uncle Francis will be quite well again soon.” But would Francis ever be well again; well in mentality; able to reconstruct his life? Patricia’s reason said “Yes” to those questions; Patricia’s instinct said “No.” She had thought once, long ago at Wargrave, that he might yet do great things, make a name for himself: there seemed a force in him then, a power behind his self-absorption. But this new Francis was not even self-absorbed: there was nothing so positive as self-absorption about him: he might have been anybody. And when he finally shuffled off through Tebbits’ cow-yard, started down the meadow path to his new home, Patricia’s fantasy pictured him a stricken beast, crawling away to die in solitude. . . . But next day’s telegram from the War Office dispelled all fantasies! Peter was wounded, back in England, in London: the world, for Patricia, shrank to the size of her husband’s left arm. § 3 Patricia had waited thirteen months for that telegram; and once her anxious eyes deciphered its exact meaning, she knew no feeling except relief. Her man was home again, out of it, not for a week’s exeat but for months, perhaps for good! They would give him leave. He would see Sunflowers. She would nurse him back to health. . . .