Twenty-four hours later, with a warrant for two months’ leave in my pocket, I was standing on Victoria platform, a free man. I had often wondered what it would feel like. Would it seem very strange to be no longer under authority, to be able to do what I liked, and to go where I wanted? I had wondered whether the atmosphere of a prison camp would still hang over me, and whether I should see in commissionaires and waiters some dim survival of those whiskered sentries. When I went to a theatre, should I turn rather nervously to the powdered lackey in the vestibule, as if half expecting a thundered “es ist verboten”? Would it take long to drop those habits of subservience? But when I was once there, all those misgivings were as a dream. It seemed that I had never been away at all. With my old-time skill, I overawed a taxi-driver, and promised to “make it worth his while.” I drove round to my banker, and cashed an enormous cheque; then to my tailors to order a civilian suit. And then--Hampstead. I lay back against the padded cushion and watched each well-known landmark fall behind me--Lord’s, Swiss Cottage, the Hampstead cricket field. Surely I had never been away at all. Those eight months in Germany, they were merely some old remnant of a fairy tale, _ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten_; they had no real existence. I felt as though I were coming back from Sandhurst for my Christmas leave. There had been no separation. In the last month I had had one week-end leave and two Sunday passes. It was just a resumption of the old life, a slipping back into the ordered harmony of days. The taxi drew up outside the door; I knocked on the window with my stick, and the hall was instantly alive with welcome. But I could not make it an occasion for heroics. It did not seem in any way a special event, demanding any exceptional excitement. “Father,” I said, “I’ve got no change. You might give that taxi-driver ten shillings.” INDEX “Alcove,” the, its cosy comforts, 173; protection of its own interests, 175-8; a place of happy memories, 186-90; Milton Hayes in retirement in, 207 Alhambra, the, the future home of Aubrey Dowdon, 201 Amiens, its luxuries, 150 Amusements in captivity, 193 _et seq._ _Anti-Northcliffe Times_, the, 222 Architecture flourishes in the Alcove, 178 Armistice, the, in Mainz, 236 _et seq._ “Arnold,” Capt., his bibulous escapade at Karlsruhe, 113 Arras to St. Quentin, attack upon, 3 Asceticism, its ethics considered, 53 Aspirin, German doctor’s sole prescription, 128 Authorship, as fostered by the Pitt League, 173, 178 Baden-Hessen, its native moderation, 117 Bapaume, 14 Barclay, Mrs. Florence, lengths resorted to by a prisoner to secure her _Rosary_, 50 “Barron,” Lieut., his capacity for sleep, 131; his ingenuity as cook, 132; his self-sacrifice in a good cause, 135; his amiable companionship, 141; a friend to the last, 260 Beauty chorus of the “Buckshees,” 214