“That satisfies you?” she said.
“Yes.”
“Something happened. Something has made a great change in you. What was it? I’m interested, you know.”
“The thing that happened was the necessity for filling in several months’ time while I lay on my back. It was necessary to think quite a little.”
“What did you think about?”
“The United States of America,” he said, “mainly.”
“I don’t understand. Are you joking?”
“No,” he said, so seriously that she knew he spoke of a momentous thing in his life. “It was the result of the war, I suppose, and of little things which derived from the war. The first thing I discovered was that I was a sort of Nolan—a man without a country. Have you read that book?”
“Yes.”
“I hadn’t done what Nolan did. I’d just neglected my country utterly. I hadn’t bothered with it. Just before I was hurt a man asked me if I loved my country, and that rather started things.... I don’t go around talking this sort of thing to everybody,” he said with sudden reserve.