For by this time I had passed through that process which is commonly known as “getting over it.” That is, a new self was living a new life on a new plane of existence. All that belonged to the period before I went to enlist at Ottawa was on the other side of a flood. I had not precisely forgotten; I had only died and become a transmigrated soul. Whatever was past was past. I might suffer from it; I might feel its consequences; but I couldn’t live it again. On the other hand, I was living vividly in the present. Not so much consciously or by word as because I couldn’t help it, I had merged everything I was into one dominating purpose with which, as far as I was aware, Regina Barry had nothing to do. The aims for which the war was being fought were my aims; I had no others. When these objectives were won my life, it seemed to me, would be over. It would melt away in that victory as dawn into sunrise. It would not be lost; it would only be absorbed—a spark in the blaze of noonday. So mentally I was pressing forward. Though I could do no more fighting, I had been told that there was still work by which I could contribute to the object beside which no other object could be taken into consideration. I was being sent back for that reason. Not much had been told me as yet about what I was to do, but I understood that it was to be in connection with American public opinion. It will be remembered that at the end of 1916 the United States was not only not in the war, but it was still doubtful as to whether or not she ever would be. The hand of a cautious listener being on the pulse of a patient people, it was on the beat of that pulse that the issue turned. I understood that, with my acquaintance ranging among high and low, I was to do what I could to make the pulse a little quicker. I might not be able to do much, but we had all learned the value of small individual contributions. It was argued that in proportion as the American people began to see on which side the balance of righteousness dipped, my game leg and my black patch, and the haggardness and gauntness and batteredness of my whole appearance, would have some appeal. The appeal would be the stronger for the fact that I was not an Englishman, but a Canadian—blood-brother to the man of his own continent, blood-brother to the Briton, blood-brother to the Frenchman, blood-son of the great ideals fathered by the Anglo-Saxon race, and in which all free peoples in the course of two hundred years had been made participants—and quick to spring to their defense. I was to be, therefore, a kind of unobtrusive, unaccredited ambassador to the man in the office and the street, with instructions to be inoffensive but persuasive.