Blurred, all right, and chafed. One thing he was getting to understand a little, and to have an affection for. That was the American soldier--not officer, so much, but the ruffian in the ranks, _dogus bogus Americanus_--the fellow fused of Irish, Scotch and Jew, of German, English, Russian and French; something of each in the solution, something of all. In the first place, this Yank was the funniest thing ever turned loose on the planet. His officers were occasionally funny in a different way. Dicky vaguely perceived that an abyss was slowly but surely forming between this Yank and the patriots at home--an abyss only to be bridged by silence. Quite as slowly but surely Dicky’s heart opened to this enlisted man. One has to love something. Once or twice, things he saw this laughing maniac from America do made him very much ashamed of his own mental antics in a certain red room of Bombay. XXXIII PARIS, 1918--HADDON AND AMES SO far as Dicky was concerned, the things of great moment in his experience in France all happened in the fall of 1918. He was in Paris at the end of that shocking summer, and found a letter from Nagar which reiterated that the curtain could not rise on the Drama of India until Great Britain was through fighting in France and the land of the Euphrates.... He was stopping at the _Garonne_. There was a knock at his room door one afternoon and voices outside. It was Haddon and Ames, correspondents out of New York, and they wanted money. Haddon talked first: “... He’s off his head and in a mess. He mentioned your name. He says he sniffed some gas out in the vineyards somewhere in April, and can’t get over it. Either that, or the family he’s fouled up with is feeding him ground glass.” “Who’s this you’re talking about?” Cobden asked, though he had heard the name. “Melton--done some magazine stories,” said Haddon. “You say he mentioned my name?” “His French father-in-law picked on me first,” Ames put in. “Just happened. I’m at the _Charente_, where a lot of Americans are putting up. Told me a long story of wrongs to his only child--a female child now married to Author Melton. Mentioned your name----” “He was gassed?” Dicky repeated. “He says he was,” said Haddon. “It’s an operation case, all right. Melton will have to be cut out of that French house.” “I don’t know whether it’s gas in my case or not,” Dicky said, “but the fact is I am not rightly aboard this conversation.” “The idea is to get aboard with some American currency,” said Ames. “American in trouble--fellows all willing to help a little. Up to somebody to get the fool out. Father picked on me----” “Let me get this straight,” Dicky heard himself saying, though all he wanted under heaven at this moment was to be alone.