As the spring advanced Harvey grew increasingly bitter; grew morbid
and increasingly self-conscious also. He began to think that people were
smiling behind his back, and when they asked about Sara Lee he met with
almost insulting brevity what he felt was half-contemptuous kindness.
He went nowhere, and worked all day and until late in the night. He did
well in his business, however, and late in March he received a
substantial raise in salary. He took it without enthusiasm, and told
Belle that night at dinner with apathy.

After the evening meal it was now his custom to go to his room and there,
shut in, to read. He read no books on the war, and even the quarter
column entitled Salient Points of the Day's War News hardly received a
glance from him now.

In the office when the talk turned to the war, as it did almost hourly,
he would go out or scowl over his letters.

"Harvey's hit hard," they said there.

"He's acting like a rotten cub," was likely to be the next sentence.
But sometimes it was: "Well, what'd you expect? Everything ready to get
married, and the girl beating it for France without notice! I'd be sore
myself."

On the day of the raise in salary his sister got the children to bed and
straightened up the litter of small garments that seemed always to
bestrew the house, even to the lower floor. Then she went into Harvey's
room. Coat and collar off, he was lying on the bed, but not reading.
His book lay beside him, and with his arms under his head he was staring
at the ceiling.