Tom could not put these things into words, he didn't even clearly realise them, but he knew that he was different. The very thought that he had looked into the face of death made him realise the wondrousness of life. Tom did not feel that he had been a hero, and yet he knew that the life he had been living, and the work he had been doing, especially during the last few months, had called qualities, which lay latent in his being, into life and action. The war had not made him a different man, it had only aroused dormant qualities within him. The fires through which he had passed had cleansed him, and he knew that life would never be the same again. But more than all that, he, like thousands of others, had learnt the great secret of life, and realised that it was only by opening his life to the Eternal Life that the highest manhood could be known. And yet he was strangely dissatisfied. He had read his mother's letter telling him that Alice Lister was engaged to Harry Briarfield, and his heart was very sore at the thought of it. Never before had he realised the meaning of the choice he had made, when more than a year before he had left Alice to walk out with Polly Powell. "And yet I loved Alice all the time," he reflected, as the train rushed northward. "I never knew how I did love her till now. I must have been mad and worse than mad!" For a long time he had ceased to care for Polly Powell; when he was in Surrey his mother's letter had opened his eyes to the kind of girl she really was. He saw her, coarse, loud-talking, and vulgar; a girl who had appealed only to what was coarse in his own nature. And he had yielded to her blandishments; he had left a pure, refined girl for her, and he had lost Alice for ever. That was the bitterness in Tom's cup of joy. He was proud of what he had done--what fellow situated as he was would not be? His heart thrilled with exultation as he remembered what the Colonel had said and written about him. He remembered with joy, too, what his comrades had said when he left for home, and the cheers they gave him. Oh, if he hadn't been such a fool! He thought of what his home-coming might have been if he had remained true to Alice; he fancied the look in her eyes as she greeted him; of the feelings which would fill his heart as he sat by her side in the church which she attended. But that was impossible now; he had made his choice, and she had made hers. Thus his home-coming would be robbed of half its joy. If he saw Alice at all she would be in the company of Harry Briarfield, and Briarfield, he knew, had always looked down upon him. "But there," he said to himself, "I'll bear it like a man. I have done my bit, and that's something, anyhow." He had sent a telegram to his mother the day before, telling her of the time he expected to arrive in Brunford, and presently when the train drew into the station he looked out of the window eagerly expectant, and with fast-beating heart.