To feel grumpy in such surroundings was certainly black ingratitude.  It was an idyllic place.  My pavilion was a sort of Trianon, a Marie Antoinette bower, all flowers and gold.  Fresh green woods grew about it; a lake stretched before it; swans dotted the water where trees were mirrored, and there were marble steps and balustrades.  Across this glittering expanse rose Raincy-la-Tour, proud and stately, with its formal gardens and its fountains and its Versailles-like front.  In the afternoons I could see the wounded soldiers walking there or being pushed to and fro in wheel-chairs; legless and armless, some of them; wreckage of the mighty battle-fields; timely reminders, poor heroic fellows, that there were people in the world a great deal worse off than I.

Yet, instead of being thankful, I was profoundly wretched.  I moped and sulked; I fell each day into a deeper, more consistent gloom.  I tried grimly to regain my strength, with a view to seeking other quarters.  While I stayed here I was the guest of the Firefly of France; and though I admired him,—­I should have been a cad, a quitter, a poor loser, everything I had ever held anathema in days gone by, not to do so,—­still I couldn’t feel toward him as a man should feel toward his host; not in the least!

On three separate occasions Dunny motored up to Paris, bringing back as the fruits of his first excursion my baggage from the Ritz.  I was clothed again, in my right mind; except for my swathed head, I looked highly civilized.  The day when I had raced hither and yon, and fought an unbelievable battle in a dark hall, and insanely masqueraded first in a leather coat, then in a pale-blue uniform, seemed dim and far-off indeed.

“It was a nice hashish dream,” I told my mirrored image.  “But it wasn’t real, my lad, for a moment; such things don’t happen to folks like you.  You’re not the romantic type; you don’t look like some one in an old picture; you haven’t brought down thirty German aeroplanes or thereabouts, and won every war medal the French can give and the name of Ace.  No; you look like a—­a correct bulldog; and winning an occasional polo cup is about your limit.  Even if it hadn’t been settled before you met her, you wouldn’t have stood a chance.”

There were times when I prayed never to see Esme Falconer again.  There were other times when I knew I would drag myself round the world—­yes, on my crutches!—­if at the end of the journey I could see her for an instant, a long way off.  I could see that my despondency was driving Dunny to distraction.  He evolved the theory that I was going into a decline.

Then came the afternoon that made history.  I was sitting at my window.  The trees seemed specially green, the sky specially blue, the lake specially bright.  I was feeling stronger and was glumly planning a move to Paris when I saw an automobile speed up the poplared walk toward Raincy-la-Tour.