'I'm beginning to get quite used to the life--and lately I have been doing some observation work with an F.O.O. (that means Forward Observation Officer), which is awfully exciting. Your business on these occasions is to get as close to the Germans as you can, without being seen, and you take a telephonist with you to send back word to the guns, and, by Jove, we do get close sometimes! 'Well, dear old Pam, there's my engineer coming across the fields, and I must shut up. Mind--if I don't come back to you--you're just to think, as I told you before, that it's _all right_. Nothing matters--_nothing_--but seeing this thing through. Any day we may be in the thick of such a fight as I suppose was never seen in the world before. Or any night--hard luck! one may be killed in a beastly little raid that nobody will ever hear of again. But anyway it's all one. It's worth it. '_Your_ letters don't sound to me as though you were particularly enjoying life. Why don't you ever give me news of Arthur? He writes me awfully jolly letters, and always says something nice about you. Father has written to me _three_ times--decent, I call it,--though he always abuses Lloyd George, and generally puts some Greek in I can't read. I wonder if we were quite right about Broomie? You never say anything about her either. But I got a letter from Beryl the other day, and what Miss B. seems to be doing with Father and the estate is pretty marvellous. 'All the same I don't hear any gossip as to what you and I were afraid of. I wonder if I was a brute to answer her as I did--and after her nice letter to me? Anyway, it's no wonder she doesn't write to me any more. And she _did_ tell me such a lot of news. 'Good-bye. Your writing-pad is really ripping. Likewise pen. Hullo, there go some more shells. I really must get back and see what's up.--Your loving 'DESMOND.' Meanwhile in the seething world of London, where the war-effort of an Empire was gathered up into one mighty organism, the hush of expectancy grew ever deeper. Only a few weeks or days could now divide us from the German rush on Paris and the coast. Behind the German lines all was movement and vast preparation. Any day England might rise to find the last fight begun. Yet morning after morning all the news that came was of raids, endless raids, on both sides--a perpetual mosquito fight, buzzing now here, now there, as information was wanted by the different Commands. Many lives were lost day by day, many deeds of battle done. But it all seemed as nothing--less than nothing--to those whose minds were fixed on the clash to come. Then one evening, early in the second week in March, a telegram reached Aubrey Mannering at Aldershot. He rushed up to town, and went first to the War Office, where Chicksands was at work.