Nothing unexpected ever happened; there was nothing to look forward to; each day was exactly like the one that had gone before; he did not, indeed, see how anything could ever happen now. He would remain in that office for the rest of his life. In the end he might become manager of a department. At the age of forty he might have a large enough salary to be able to think of marriage. Forty! How often had they agreed in the mess that love was the privilege of the young. As far as he could see, everyone else was in the same boat. He used to go round occasionally to the long bar at the Troc: a melancholy sight. In 1917 it had been full of young officers, eager, light-hearted, home on leave with pay in their pockets and in their hearts a reckless determination to make the most of what little time was left them. The same fellows were there now, young men in mufti, leaning across the bar sipping their cocktails, raising their glasses to the light, exchanging their “cheeriohs.” But the lightheartedness had left them; their faces were set in lines of sullen discontent; they would stand and talk together of France and their experiences there. The unpleasant memories had been effaced. Already they had forgotten. They were unhappy in the present; they remembered they had been happy in the past. And, with a vague nostalgia, Miller appreciated that in France, in spite of the danger and discomfort, there had been always something to look forward to. There had been the mail, a relief, the taking over of a new bit of line, a continual change, and there had been leave--how wonderful that had been, to count the days to one’s leave, to say to one’s self: “in twenty-three days’ time I shall be in London”; there was nothing like that now. And peace: how often he had talked of it, of all the things he would do, _après la guerre_; the future had seemed to him boundless then with opportunities. He had looked forward with a happy confidence to the days of routine and quiet work. He had asked nothing more than that--the resumption of the ordered ways.