It was when the Peace Treaty had been signed but not ratified by the representatives of Germany and Austria that I met some of the friends with whom I had travelled along many roads of war or had met in scenes which already seemed far back in history. In London, after a journey to America, I came again in touch with young Harding, whom I had seen last on his way home to his pretty wife, who had fretted at his long absence, and Charles Fortune, whose sense of humour had made me laugh so often in the time of tragedy. Those were chance meetings in the eddies of the great whirlpool of London life, as I saw other faces, strange for a moment or two, until the difference between a field-cap and a bowler hat, a uniform and civil clothes, was wiped out by a look of recognition, and the sound of a remembered voice.
Not by chance but by a friendship which had followed me across the world with written words, I found myself once more in the company of Wickham Brand, and with him went again to spend some evenings with Eileen O'Connor, who was now home in Kensington, after that grim drama which she had played so long in Lille.
With "Daddy" Small I had been linked up by a lucky chain of coincidences which had taken us both to New York at the same time and brought us back to Europe on the same boat, which was the White Star liner Lapland.
My chance meeting with Harding led to a renewal of friendship which was more of his seeking than mine,
