He made now something tolerable of his life. People showed a wonderful kindness and there was always someone to entertain him, some new present that someone had sent him; people could not be kind enough. He was grateful for all of this, but he spent many, many hours in thinking. He found that he had never thought before; he found that he would have gone to his grave without thinking had not the great catastrophe occurred. He thought of a great many things, but especially of what other people's lives were like. There were, he supposed, a great number of people who had had misfortunes as overwhelming at his--How had they behaved? And what, after all, were all the other people, in all their different circumstances, doing? Before this it had only occurred to him to be interested in the people who were leading lives like his, now he wondered about everybody. Little things became of the greatest importance. Every day he read the paper with absorbed care from the first line to the last. The arrangement of the room interested him and he would give its details, minutely, his consideration. He was greatly interested in gossip and he would chatter, happily, all the afternoon did someone come and visit him. To everyone it was an amazing thing that he should take it all so easily. No one had ever given Roddy credit for the strength of character that was in him and they did not perhaps recognize that his earlier impatient condemnation of other people--"Why the devil don't the feller stand up to it like a man?"--made him now conscious that he was himself at last faced with a similar test to which he himself must stand up. But, beyond question, he could not have held the position as he did had it not been for Rachel; he seemed to see that here was a chance of seizing her and making her really his own, a chance that would never be his again. He was making an appeal to her--she was closer to him, he thought, with every day. So his natural humour and spirits returned--At present life was tolerable; he suffered very little pain and he was aware that a number of people to whom he had never meant anything whatever now cared for him very much indeed. He was ashamed when he heard of the men who were dying and suffering for their country--"He would have had to have gone to Africa," he told himself, "if he'd not had his accident. Then enteric or a bullet and good-bye to Rachel altogether!" III