“Stacey.”
Stacey glanced the letter through swiftly, folded and addressed it, and laid it on the desk.
Then he went to bed and fell asleep at once.
Waking early the next morning he did not lie still through those moments of delicious indolence in which most men indulge themselves, but slipped out of bed immediately and into his cold bath.
His body responded to the shock glowingly. It was magnificently fit. The muscles of his back and abdomen rippled smoothly as he rubbed himself with the rough towel. One would justly have admired Stacey as a healthy handsome animal. And it may be that his obstinate distaste for speculation, his barely conscious, undeliberate desire to avoid thought, arose out of his animal instinct of self-preservation, was but the deep determination not to allow his strong sane body to be affected by his sick and twisted mind.
He took from the closet a pre-war suit of his, a soft gray, civilian suit, and in regarding it felt a keener joy than he had felt in stepping off the steamer or in seeing Phil and Catherine or in drinking champagne last evening—a keener joy, alas, than he felt when he had donned the clothes; for they did not seem natural and easy to his militarized body.
Then he went downstairs and out of doors into the well-kept garden. It was still only seven o’clock and nobody was about—not even his father, who was an early riser.
But Mr. Carroll did presently appear. “Well, you are changed, Stacey!” he called jovially, as he drew near through the tall rose bushes. “Seems to me I remember the time when for you to get down to eight o’clock breakfast was—hello!” And he surveyed his son critically. “Back in civilian clothes already, eh?” he observed meditatively. “Well, that’s right, I suppose. You are a civilian again, of course. And I don’t think much of these lads who go flaunting their uniforms about for months after they’re out of the service, determined to wring the last drop of credit from their performance of duty. Still . . .” He paused. “Well,” he concluded cheerfully, “there’s one thing. You can put on all the civilian clothes you like, but nobody with half an eye would be deceived. You don’t look like a civilian. You look like a soldier.”
“Damn it all!” said Stacey, exasperated, “I know I do.”
His father laughed. “Come on in to breakfast. Do you still eat that idiotic excuse for a meal you used to—coffee and two bites of a roll?”