I stayed in it so long that my sister-in-law became anxious and tapped at the door to know if I were all right. All right! Before I was properly dressed--but running about the house most shamelessly for all that--my brother arrived. It was good to see him again,--very good. We “foregathered,”--what? And the next morning scandalously early, the breakfast things still on the table, found me face to face once more with the woman who had brought me back to life. All that nightmare was immediately washed away for ever. It was past. The future was too vague for imaginings but the present was the most golden thing I had ever known. PART II _UBIQUE_ 1 The Division of Field Artillery to which I was posted by the War Office was training at Bulford up to its neck in mud, but the brigade had moved to Fleet two days before I joined. By that time--it was a good fifteen days since I had come home--I had grown accustomed to the feel and splendour of a Sam Browne belt and field boots and the recurring joy of being saluted not merely by Tommies but by exalted beings like sergeants and sergeant-majors; and I felt mentally as well as physically clean. At the same time I arrived at the Fleet Golf Club, where most of the officers were billeted, feeling vastly diffident. I’d never seen a gun, never given a command in my life and hadn’t the first or foggiest idea of the sort of things gunners did, and my only experience of an officers’ mess was my dinner with the Major in France. Vaguely I knew that there was a certain etiquette demanded. It was rather like a boy going to a new school. It was tea time and dark when the cab dropped me at the door and the place was practically empty. However, an officer emerged, asked me if I’d come to join, and led me in to tea. Presently, however, a crowd swarmed in, flung wet mackintoshes and caps about the hall and began devouring bread and jam in a way that more and more resembled school. They looked me over with the unintentional insolence of all Englishmen and one or two spoke. They were a likely-looking lot, mostly amazingly young and full of a vitality that was like an electric current. One, a fair willowy lad with one or two golden fluffs that presumably did duty as a moustache, took me in hand. He was somewhat fancifully called Pot-face but he had undoubtedly bought the earth and all things in it. Having asked and received my name he informed me that I was posted to his battery and introduced me to the other subaltern, also of his battery. This was a pale, blue-eyed, head-on-one-side, sensitive youth who was always just a moment too late with his repartee. Pot-face, who possessed a nimble, sarcastic tongue, took an infinite delight in baiting him to the verge of tears. His nickname, to which incidentally he refused to answer, was the Fluttering Palm.