So keen was his preoccupation with self-mastery that he resented every effort to influence him, and acted with unnecessary strictness in dealing with private lumbermen. He was often deprived of human relationships during his days in the field, and gradually his mind became more and more enmeshed in morbid reflections about himself. His mind simply refused to concentrate on the technical volumes which he had brought with him to improve the solitude. Reveries which had been slowly germinating on the periphery of his attention now began to foliate. K had always wondered why his mother burned those little bits of paper. It dawned on him one day that she might really have died of tuberculosis, and that he must therefore be predisposed toward that disease. Early in his high-school days, he had begun deep-breathing exercises, though he had never freely admitted to himself or anybody else what lay behind it. He always gave the usual account of his mother’s death to insurance examiners, smothering his doubts in affirmation. This was his state of mind when America entered the war. He found himself saying that since he was going to die anyhow from a loathsome disease, he might as well die at once and get it over with. Enlisting without delay, he sought to reach an exposed position as rapidly as he could. But the government had different ideas, and assigned him to a branch of the service where his technical skill would prove useful. In his disappointment, all the old feelings of inadequacy returned. Interviewed by an officer he floundered and stumbled, neglecting to report essential facts about his training and experience. The accidental intervention of an acquaintance straightened out the matter, and secured the authority to which his record entitled him. At first he was very much embarrassed in the company of lumberjacks, but his behavior never showed his confusion. His actual record was, as usual, excellent, and his conscientious efficiency won the indorsement of everybody who knew him. K married a rather dominating school-teacher whom he had known for some time. When things went badly, as they often did, he was partially impotent, and also showed the phenomenon which has been christened “Sunday neurosis.” Every Sunday afternoon when he was at home he would find himself assailed by deep depression, and would weep quietly to himself.[43] In spite of these neurotic troubles, K was able to make an important place for himself inside a bureaucracy, when he came back from the army.