"On the whole, I think I benefited," he said. She looked at him quickly, appraisingly. "Yes," she said, "you _have_ benefited. You look different, somehow, and better. There was something about you before that made me feel uneasy--not exactly comfortable. Like a panther in a cage." She laughed lightly at her simile. "You seemed to be pacing up and down and glaring at the world. That is gone.... Yes, and you've been behaving yourself, taking better care of yourself." "Yes," he said. "My address is no longer the Pontchartrain bar--and I've got a job." "That satisfies you?" she said. "Yes." "Something happened. Something has made a great change in you. What was it? I'm interested, you know." "The thing that happened was the necessity for filling in several months' time while I lay on my back. It was necessary to think quite a little." "What did you think about?" "The United States of America," he said, "mainly." "I don't understand. Are you joking?" "No," he said, so seriously that she knew he spoke of a momentous thing in his life. "It was the result of the war, I suppose, and of little things which derived from the war. The first thing I discovered was that I was a sort of Nolan--a man without a country. Have you read that book?" "Yes." "I hadn't done what Nolan did. I'd just neglected my country utterly. I hadn't bothered with it. Just before I was hurt a man asked me if I loved my country, and that rather started things.... I don't go around talking this sort of thing to everybody," he said with sudden reserve. "Of course not." "Have you ever thought much about it?" "No--I think not. I've rather taken the country for granted, except when Dad has bellowed about the fatherland and that sort of thing. Then I've been stirred up a little. Irritated, I guess the word is. I haven't been an out-and-out American, but I haven't been anything else. That's all.... Like father, for instance. His father was chased out of Germany in 'forty-eight, and you'd think Dad would have a grudge against it. But he hasn't. He gets sentimental about Germany. He isn't an American at all, though he was born here ... and that never seemed right to me." Potter nodded. "He's not alone, of course, and it is a dangerous condition.... Well, the thing that happened to me was that I learned something about the United States, and the first thing I knew I was mighty strong for it." "And what are you doing here--with all these drawings and this machinery?" "Aeroplanes," he said. "Maybe you can understand what I'm doing. Nobody else seems to.... Doesn't it seem to you that we've _got_ to get into this war?" "I haven't thought much about that--not a great deal. But nobody seems to want war."