a wounded leg which
would never be sound again; and he was now in the War Office in
connection with horses, about which he knew. He did not like it, having
lived too long with all sorts and conditions of men who were neither
English nor official, a combination which he found trying. His life
indeed, just now, bored him to distraction, and he would ten times
rather have been back in France. This was why he found the word "Peace"
so exceptionally tantalising.

Reaching his rooms, he threw off his tunic, to whose stiff regularity he
still had a rooted aversion; and, pulling out a pipe, filled it and sat
down at his window.

Moonshine could not cool the hot town, and it seemed sleeping badly--the
seven million sleepers in their million homes. Sound lingered on, never
quite ceased; the stale odours clung in the narrow street below, though
a little wind was creeping about to sweeten the air. 'Curse the war!'
he thought. 'What wouldn't I give to be sleeping out, instead of in this
damned city!' They who slept in the open, neglecting morality, would
certainly have the best of it tonight, for no more dew was falling than
fell into Jimmy Fort's heart to cool the fret of that ceaseless thought:
'The war! The cursed war!' In the unending rows of little grey houses,
in huge caravanserais, and the mansions of the great, in villas, and
high slum tenements; in the government offices, and factories, and
railway stations where they worked all night; in the long hospitals
where they lay in rows; in the camp prisons of the interned; in bar
racks, work-houses, palaces--no head, sleeping or waking, would be
free of that thought: 'The cursed war!' A spire caught his eye, rising
ghostly over the roofs. Ah! churches alone, void of the human soul,
would be unconscious! But for the rest, even sleep would not free them!
Here a mother would be whispering the name of her boy; there a merchant
would snore and dream he was drowning, weighted with gold; and a wife
would be turning to stretch out her arms to-no one; and a wounded
soldier wake out of a dream trench with sweat on his brow; and a
newsvendor in his garret mutter hoarsely. By thousands the bereaved
would be tossing, stifling their moans; by thousands the ruined would
be gazing into the dark future; and housewives struggling with sums;
and soldiers sleeping like logs--for to morrow they died; and children
dreaming of them; and prostitutes lying in stale wonder at the busyness
of their lives