In the fighting-zone itself, boredom followed fear, fear boredom, with monotonous and unending regularity. There were some days when never a rifle cracked, never a gun barked: others—as that Sunday which saw Stark’s headquarters moved to the Ramparts—when unanswered salvos rained on ruined streets, on gun-positions, and cross-roads, on stumbling fatigue-parties and sentries acrouch behind sandbags; when the very breastworks heaved and blew skyward, crashing down in mud and mine-débris on the corpses of the men who had inhabited them. Still, the human animal endured. More, he learned to adapt himself to this condition and that; avoiding danger by instinct; finding his needed relaxation in petty amusements; making to himself, even, some social order out of the chaos wherein he dwelt. And since none, sallying forth, might know if he would come back alive, a certain careless spirit,—more hysteria than the “war humour” stay-at-homes christened it,—stiffened endurance, irradiated relaxation. In the Ramparts, vast catacombe of old brickwork impervious to any artillery, were pianos, gramophones, picture-galleries selected from coloured supplements of the _Sketch_ or _La Vie Parisienne_; cheery Messes whereto came mud-soaked men out of the noisy night, eager for whisky, always ready to break into song. Some of those men died; some were wounded; some sickness took: but always other men replaced them—and life went on. Moreover, since the human animal cannot now exist without the written word, he even discovered, buried away among the ruins of the City, a printing-press, and type, and paper, from which evolved itself the semblance of a news-sheet—which he called _The Wipers Times_. In this atmosphere, whatever glamour “active service” once possessed for P.J. soon disappeared. He did his work now, office and telephone duties varied by trips to front-line or batteries, with the meticulous accuracy of an automaton; wrote much to Patricia; and read the daily, weekly and monthly newspapers from cover to cover. Towards the end of February, however, chance provided him with a new interest. Monsieur Van Woumen, the Belgian who had taken furnished his house in Lowndes Square, was anxious to renew the agreement. Peter, purely from habit, wrote back to the agent who made the offer, that he thought there should be an increase in the rent. The agent replied that his client would not increase the furnished rent; but might be prepared, on certain conditions, to take the remainder of the Crown lease off Peter’s hands. “Would you,” wrote the agent, “consider an offer for the furniture?”