But Peter Jameson did not die. The pneumonia ran its course—two days of choking misery for him, of mad anxiety for his wife—then the passing of crisis—the slow return to painless breath and solid foods.

For the first forty-eight hours, Patricia stayed by him. The hospital-staff, knowing her Heron Baynet’s daughter, made full amends: Matron grew kindly; neglectful Sister was unremitting in service. On the third day, Peter said very weakly, “Hello, old thing, what are you doing here?”—and she went back to Harley Street a happy woman.

Followed a week of daily visits, during which she talked and he listened. Temperature dropped to ninety-nine point three. Wound in arm drained away its poison. She grew nervous about her children left alone with the servants; ran down to Sunflowers for the day; found chaotic idleness; stayed the night; straightened things out; returned to town.

At the end of the second week, her father pronounced his patient definitely out of danger; persuaded her to leave London. She yielded hesitatingly, realizing for the first time the handicaps of reduced income—lack of car, lack of governess for the children, of efficient servants; torn between her love for the man and her duty to his home....

Peter himself, during that first fortnight, was too ill for emotion. To be in bed, to be under a solid roof, to be washed—these sensations contented him. He rather liked waking at night to hear rain outside, turning to sleep with the thought, “Well, I’m not in that anyway.” He liked having his meals brought to him on clean china, the sounds of women’s voices. He experienced a profound relief at the absence of danger....

But as Peter passed from illness to convalescence, he grew aware of new dangers. These dangers were manifold, and each terrifying. Never, at the Front, had he known fear as he knew fear at home. There was the Fear in Sleep—a horror which woke him, sodden with sweat, from visions of Lindsay still dying in TrÔnes Wood, still dying but not yet dead.... There was the Fear in Daylight—a visionless misery, an immense black cap which the soul donned or doffed at its own bitter will. While that Fear lasted, the soul under the cap prayed ingratiatingly for death.... There was the Fear of the Future, in which the future held no hope beyond the present: and the Fear of the Present, when the present held no hope save the future.... There was the Fear of Time—where time hung dead through eternity or spun so fast that none might accomplish a second’s labour between his cradle and his grave.... There was the Fear of Pain, and the Fear of Poverty, the Fear of being Sent Back to the Front, and the Fear of having to Stop at Home: but strangest, strongest of all the fears Peter learned in those first days was the Fear of Consumption.

He used to lie for hours remembering Rolleston’s story of the gassed Canadian, hearing Rolleston’s words about tubercle, till every little cough seemed a warning of death: then the Fear in Daylight would come to him, whispering, “Perhaps that is best,” and the Fear of Poverty would mutter, “There’ll be the insurance money for them if you die.” ...

Peter did not realize that these fears were among the commonest symptoms of neurasthenia. Peter knew nothing about neurasthenia, except that “Pat’s governor made rather a hobby of it”; nothing about shell-shock beyond the Army dictum of the period, “that it meant a chap got rather shocked at being shelled.” His fears shamed him; and so he hid them away, as decent men hide uncleanly impulses; never dreamed of associating them with that theory about the “Limit of Human Endurance” which Heron Baynet had once propounded to him over their brandy and cigars.

This almost impossible battle, the battle of the neurasthenic with his own soul, Peter Jameson entered on unaided—feeling himself lost to all honour, coward and traitor in sight of his own manhood. Yet at the outset he fought well; so well that, so long as he remained in hospital, not even Heron Baynet suspected his condition....

At the end of his first month, came letters from Garton, from Sandiland and Purves. The Brigade had been moved northwards (“quite close to where we first went into action,” wrote the censor-wise Garton): “Mr. Henry” was riding Little Willie and had taken Jelks for groom: “Captain Lodden was home, ‘sick.’” It all seemed very far away from the bare echoing hospital, from the gossip of the ward....

Passed another month of aimless existence, varied only by Patricia’s weekly visits, by a letter from his brother Arthur, by a box of cigars from Maurice Beresford, by a state-call of Sir Hubert and Lady Rawlings....

His arm healed rapidly. They took away his sling, allowed him “down” to meals—where he learned the Fear of Eating in Public. He went for his first walk—and discovered the Fear of Traffic. Then, quite unexpectedly, he was summoned to a Medical Board: at which three kindly men examined his arm, tested his lungs, and asked him how he “felt in himself.”

“Quite all right,” said Peter, “but of course I’d like to go home for a bit.”

They gave him three months’ leave, and advised him to take care of himself. “One never knows with lungs, you know,” said the President.... And Peter, the Fear of Consumption eating out his last remnant of will power, took train to the home Patricia had planned for him.