Explore "Men, Women and Guns" by H.C. McNeile on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
When Jim Denver told Lady Alice Conway that he was sane again, he spoke / no more than the truth. A few weeks in France, and then a shattered arm / had brought him back to England with more understanding than he had ever / possessed before. He had gone out the ordinary Englishman -- casual, / sporting, easy going, somewhat apathetic; he had come back a thinker as / well, at times almost a dreamer. It affects different men in different / ways -- but none escape. And that is what those others cannot / understand -- those others who have not been across. Even the man who / comes back on short leave hardly grasps how the thing has changed him: / hardly realises that the madness is still in his soul. He has not time; / his leave is just an interlude. He is back again in France almost before / he realises he has left it. In mind he has never left it.
There is humour there in plenty -- farce even; boredom, excitement, / passion, hatred. Every human emotion runs its full gamut in the Land of / Topsy Turvy; in the place where the life of a man is no longer / three-score years and ten, but just so long as the Great Reaper may / decide and no more. And you are caught in the whirl -- you are tossed here / and there by a life of artificiality, a life not of one's own seeking, / but a life which, having once caught you, you are loath to let go.