What had happened to her.
It was going to be wonderful to meet them--and to meet everybody he had once known.

Wonderful because he would see what the war had done to them and they would see what it had done to him.

A peculiar significance lay between his sister and Helen--all these girls, and the fact of his having gone to war.
"They may not think of it, but _I know_," he muttered to himself.

And he sat down upon his bed to plan how best to meet them, and others.

He did not know what he was going to encounter, but he fortified himself against calamity.