He locked himself, as it were, in his apartment. He sat down and called on his will. With a systematic brutality he got himself in hand. He reviewed his aims: to make more money, to get Sylvia. He emerged at last, hard and uncompromising, ready for the selfish ones, and went down town. Blodgett greeted him with a cheer.
"Miracles! For the first time since you got back you look yourself again."
"I am," George answered, "all but the limp. That will go some day maybe."
He wanted it to go. He desired enormously to rid himself of the last reminder of his service.
Lambert was definitely caught by the marble temple, but Goodhue and he would stay together, more or less tied to Blodgett, to accept the opportunities George foresaw for dragging money by sharp reasoning from the reconstruction period. He applied himself to exchange. From their position they could run wild in the stock market at little risk, but there were big things to be made out of exchange, about which the cleverest men didn't seem to know anything worth a penny in any currency.
Everyone noticed his recovery, and everyone congratulated him except Bailly. When George went down to Betty's wedding the long tutor met him at the station, crying out querulously:
"What's happened to you?"
George laughed.
"Got over the war reaction, I guess."
"What the deuce did you go to war for at all then?" Bailly asked.