“Yours,
JOHN.

“P.S.  I wonder where Tom McGregor is, and Pole’s boy and Joe Grace, and those Greys who went diverse ways.  As you never talk of yourself when you write those brief letters on notepaper the size of a postage stamp, you might at least tell me all about these good people in Westways.”

She telegraphed him, “Uncle Jim slightly wounded, is coming home.  Will write.  Leila Grey.”

About four in the afternoon of this July 14th Ann Penhallow kissed her husband as he came up the porch steps.  He was leaning heavily on Mark Rivers’s arm.  He said, “It is quite a long time, Ann.  How long is it?” Then he shook off Rivers, saying, “I am quite well,” and going by his wife went through the open door, moving like one dazed.  He stood still a moment looking about him, turned back and speaking to his wife said, “I understand now.  At first it seemed strange to me and as if I had never been here before.  Ever feel that way, Ann?”

“Oh, often, James.”  No signal of her anguish showed on the gallantly carried face of the little woman.

“Quiet, isn’t it?  When was it I was hit?  It was—­wasn’t it in May?  Rivers says it was July—­I do not like contradiction.”  His appreciation of time and recognition of locality were alike disordered, as Rivers had observed with distress and a too constant desire to set him right.  With better appreciation of his condition, Ann accepted his statement.

“Yes—­yes, of course, dear—­it is just so.”

“I knew you would understand me.  I should like to go to bed—­I want Josiah—­no one else.”

“Yes, dear,” and this above all else made clear to the unhappy little lady how far was the sturdy soldier who had left her from the broken man in undress uniform who clung to the rail, as he went slowly up the stairway with his servant.  In the hall he had seen Leila, but gave her no word, not even his habitual smile of recognition.

Ann stared after them a moment, motioned Rivers away with uplifted hand, and hastening into the library sat down and wept like a child.  She had been unprepared for the change in his appearance and ways.  More closely observant, Leila saw that the lines of decisiveness were gone, the humorous circles about the mouth and eyes, as it were, flattened out, and that the whole face, with the lips a little languidly parted, had become expressionless.  It was many days before she could see the altered visage without emotion, or talk of him to her aunt with any of the amazing hopefulness with which the older woman dwelt on her husband’s intervals of resemblance to his former self.

He would not ride or enter the stables, but his life was otherwise a childlike resumption of his ordinary habits, except that when annoyed by Ann’s too obvious anxiety or excess of carefulness, he became irritable at times and even violent in language.  He so plainly preferred Leila’s company in his short walks as to make the wife jealous and vexed that she was not wanted during every minute of his altered life.  He read no books as of old, but would have Leila read to him the war news until he fell asleep, when she quietly slipped away.