Dicky reached Bombay from Aden in the spring of 1917. He was now on his way home, the long way around. He had told no one, but it had grown upon him of late that he could relish a bit of New York after more than two years. He coldly ignored in himself the tendency to thrill at the thought of seeing Pidge Musser again. He had made a bit of a name for himself as a reporter, but was known more as a first-class fact-getter than a feature writer among newspaper men. Facts were sometimes so bleak in his work that one had to possess real understanding and real love for honest materials to find the inherent beauty and order. His knowledge of international politics was now granted by all classes of newspaper men, but he was known especially from his articles in _The Public Square_ as one who exerted a steady pressure against America entering the war. To be cool was said to be Cobden’s religion. The stuff that he wrote was cool and the words that he said. “I am a reporter, only,” he occasionally explained. “I write what I see, not my own reactions nor opinions.” He had come far in this doctrine, far enough to be trusted by white men of place in Turkey and the Holy Land, in spite of his curious scorn for war. He was somewhat slower now to get enthused over human actions than he was when he left New York; his boyish humor had become grim. He had seen the worst things men do, and written a few of them. Though he had been through as much hard riding in two years as any empire-building Englishman, he seemed to retain no personal relation to his adventures. Other men talked about him, however. There was something about the American that made it easy for others to “sketch at him.” Tales of his far chances with Tom Lawrence in El Hejas, for instance, had followed him up into Turkey, but no one knew his tendency to nausea in a pinch. Dicky had written a lot of big newspaper stories, but they were stories of the day. He had packed the films of tense and frightening and humorous moments away somewhere deep in his brain, to the end of massing them all into one--one day doing the Big Story, that had to do with finding a Man. That dream had held since the day he first saw Nagar. But in his heart of hearts everything was a side issue--world politics, world wars, newspaper stories, magazine stories, even the Big Story of all--compared to the war in himself over a girl named Pidge. He still had night sweats over the name of Rufus Melton.... A quiet voice, a tired smile, a face darkened and dusty looking from exposure, even after a clean shave--out of this face, usually shadowed by a big cake-basket helmet of cork, shone a pair of steady eyes in a fine mesh of dusty brown wrinkles--Dicky at twenty-eight. He had scarcely stepped ashore at Bombay when he heard that the States had entered the war. He touched the sleeve of an Englishman who was looking up at the promenade deck of the ship with eyes and mouth wide open. “Tell me, I hadn’t heard,” Dicky said hoarsely.