And then, when November had passed, it was “two years ago” that he found himself saying, for, after the Armistice, there had not seemed anything particular to remember. “Two years ago”--and he saw himself once again in the mud and cold of Bullecourt during those dark weeks over which had hung the menace of the great advance; strangely quiet days. There had been rain in January, cruel driving rain; the main trench had been three feet deep in mud and men had stuck in it for hours. But February had been fine and warm with a suggestion of spring. They had been out of the line just then, and he had gone for long rides to Peronne and Baupaume in the faint mild sunshine. He had been very happy, and the memory of that happiness caused him an insidious disquiet. As he walked back from the office he found himself thinking less of the mud and cold, the fatigue and danger, than of the warm comfort of the mess; the friendliness of those long evenings, when they sat round the stove and had opened bottle after bottle of port. In particular, he remembered that last night at Ervillers, when they had collected a huge beam from a neighbouring ruin and had piled up an enormous fire; he remembered how they had undressed before it, and how the light had flickered on past midnight, and that when he had woken at three o’clock, it had still glowed dimly. They had had good times, and he could not help contrasting them with this present uneventful routine of home and office. Nothing unexpected ever happened. An evening of desultory conversation. Bed. Next morning the hurried breakfast; the scramble for shoes and hat and coat; the uncomfortable journey in the tube, with the same faces opposite him, the same heavy, taciturn, discontented faces; and the squash in the lift; the bad-tempered, ill-mannered crowd; and, afterwards, from 9.30 till 5.30 in that small room at the top of the third flight of stairs with two male typists, with neither of whom he had anything in common and who were both secretly a little glad to see an ex-officer reduced to the same position as themselves, he sat arranging proofs, checking the copy, filing lists. Occasionally he had to answer an inquiry on the telephone, and this was the one excitement of his day. The telephone had always possessed a fascination for him, and whenever he heard the bell ring in the next room he would put down his pen and wait, listening for the sound of a chair pushed back, an opened door, and the short, “Mr Miller, you’re wanted on the ’phone.” It was always the same thing--an inquiry about space rate, or the date of a special issue, but he never failed to experience a tremor of excitement as he ran into the next room and took up the receiver.