The cab threaded its way swiftly along Buckingham Palace Road towards the Mall.  As they passed the long front of the Palace the traveller turned his head resolutely away, that he might not see the alien uniforms at the gates and the eagle standard flapping in the sunlight.  The taxi driver, who seemed to have combative instincts, slowed down as he was turning into the Mall, and pointed to the white pile of memorial statuary in front of the palace gates.

“Grossmutter Denkmal, yes,” he announced, and resumed his journey.

Arrived at his destination, Yeovil stood on the steps of his house and pressed the bell with an odd sense of forlornness, as though he were a stranger drifting from nowhere into a land that had no cognisance of him; a moment later he was standing in his own hall, the object of respectful solicitude and attention.  Sprucely garbed and groomed lackeys busied themselves with his battered travel-soiled baggage; the door closed on the guttural-voiced taxi driver, and the glaring July sunshine.  The wearisome journey was over.

“Poor dear, how dreadfully pulled-down you look,” said Cicely, when the first greetings had been exchanged.

“It’s been a slow business, getting well,” said Yeovil.  “I’m only three-quarter way there yet.”

He looked at his reflection in a mirror and laughed ruefully.

“You should have seen what I looked like five or six weeks ago,” he added.

“You ought to have let me come out and nurse you,” said Cicely; “you know I wanted to.”

“Oh, they nursed me well enough,” said Yeovil, “and it would have been a shame dragging you out there; a small Finnish health resort, out of the season, is not a very amusing place, and it would have been worse for any one who didn’t talk Russian.”

“You must have been buried alive there,” said Cicely, with commiseration in her voice.

“I wanted to be buried alive,” said Yeovil.  “The news from the outer world was not of a kind that helped a despondent invalid towards convalescence.  They spoke to me as little as possible about what was happening, and I was grateful for your letters because they also told me very little.  When one is abroad, among foreigners, one’s country’s misfortunes cause one an acuter, more personal distress, than they would at home even.”

“Well, you are at home now, anyway,” said Cicely, “and you can jog along the road to complete recovery at your own pace.  A little quiet shooting this autumn and a little hunting, just enough to keep you fit and not to overtire you; you mustn’t overtax your strength.”

“I’m getting my strength back all right,” said Yeovil.  “This journey hasn’t tired me half as much as one might have expected.  It’s the awful drag of listlessness, mental and physical, that is the worst after-effect of these marsh fevers; they drain the energy out of you in bucketfuls, and it trickles back again in teaspoonfuls.  And just now untiring energy is what I shall need, even more than strength; I don’t want to degenerate into a slacker.”