Then when he was badly wounded in some fighting near Festubert, in May 1915, and came home for two months' leave, he seemed like a stranger, and Beryl had not known what to be at with him.

She was told that he had suffered very much--it had been a severe thigh wound implicating the sciatic nerve--and that he had been once, at least, very near to death.

But when she tried to express sympathy with what he had gone through, or timidly to question him about it, her courage fled, her voice died in her throat.

There was something unapproachable in her old playfellow, something that held her, and indeed every one else, at bay.
He was always courteous, and mostly cheerful.

But his face in repose had an absent, haunted look, the eyes alert but fixed on vacancy, the brow overcast and frowning.