N the weeks that followed the little house came to know him well. Everybody in the little house treated him as though his injury were a decoration, which had been won especially in their defence. They were prouder to see him come walking up their steps with his blue hospital band on his remaining arm, than if Sir Douglas Haig himself had called upon them. Nobody took any count of the frequency of his visits--nobody except himself. Nobody seemed to think it strange that the moment the doctors had finished his dressings, he should wander off to Dolls' House Square. Nobody seemed to guess just how fond he was of the little lady. He hardly guessed himself. There were times when he wondered exactly how fond he was. He did not believe he was in love with her; the feeling that he had was too gentle. He had always understood that love was exciting, passionate and tumultuous with dreads, whereas in her presence he knew neither fears nor hesitancies. He wasn't the least in terror that he would lose her. He felt simply safe, the way a ship might feel when the winds had ceased to buffet and it lay still in a sheltered harbour on a level keel. This feeling of safety struck him as an extraordinary sensation to be produced in a soldier by a woman; he was a trifle ashamed of it, as though it were not quite manly. While he spoke with her, he found himself believing with a child-like faith that all women were mothers and that the world was good. He knew that for the present he could not do without her, but he was at a loss to imagine what he would do with her for always. She was like religion--she went beyond him, was bigger and better. He only dimly understood her, but was comfortable in believing that everything hidden was as kind as the part he knew. In a strangely intimate way he worshipped her, as a child adores his mother, thinking her the most perfect and beautiful being in the world. He discovered in her a wisdom of which nothing in her conversation gave the least indication; her unhurried attitude towards life created the impression. If this were love, then all the hearsay information he had gathered on the subject was mistaken. There were days when, after his wound had been dressed and he had left the hospital, he made a pretence that he was not going to visit her. He told himself that he was making her a habit, and that to make a habit of anyone was foolish. Instead of going to Dolls' House Square, he would invent some urgent business and take himself off citywards. But expeditions in which she had no share soon grew flat. He would find himself thinking about her, wondering whether she was waiting for him. He would end up, as he always ended up, by jumping in a taxi and knocking on her door in Dolls' House Square.