I have mentioned in these pages that I had already spent three months with our Otriad at the Front. I cannot now define exactly what it was that made this drive on this first evening something utterly distinct and apart from all that I had experienced during that earlier period. It is true that, before, I had been for almost two months in one place and had seen nothing at all of actual warfare, except the feeding and bandaging of the wounded. But I had imagined then, nevertheless, that I was truly "in the thick of things," as indeed, in comparison with my Moscow or Petrograd life, I was. We had not now driven through the quiet evening air for ten minutes before I knew, with assured certainty, that a new phase of life was, on this day, opening before me; the dark hedges, the thin fine dust on the roads, the deep purple colour of the air, beat at my heart, as though they themselves were helping with quiet insistency to draw me into the drama. And yet nothing could have been more peaceful than was that lovely evening. The dark plum-colour in the evening sky soaked like wine into the hills, the fields, the thatched cottages, the streams and the little woods. The faint saffron that lingered below the crests and peaks of rosy cloud showed between the stems of the silver birches like the friendly smile of a happy day. The only human beings to be seen were the peasants driving home their cows; far on the horizon the Carpathian mountains were purple in the dusk, the snow on their highest ridges faintly silver. There was not a sound in the world except the ring of our horses' hoofs upon the road. And yet this sinister excitement hammered, from somewhere, at me as I had never felt it before. It was as though the lovely evening were a painted scene lowered to hide some atrocity. "This is scarcely what you expected a conquered country to look like, is it?" I said to Trenchard. He looked about him, then said, hesitating: "No ... that is ... I don't know what I expected." A curved moon, dull gold like buried treasure, rose slowly above the hill; one white star flickered and the scents of the little gardens that lined the road grew thicker in the air as the day faded. I was conscious of some restraint with Trenchard: "He's probably wishing," I thought, "that he'd not been so expansive last night. He doesn't trust me." Once he said abruptly: "They'll give me ... won't they ... work to do? It would be terrible if there wasn't work. I'm not so ... so stupid at bandaging. I learnt a lot in the hospital and although I'm clumsy with my hands generally I'm not so clumsy about that--" "Why of course," I answered. "When there's work they'll be only too delighted. But there won't always be work. You must be prepared for that. Sometimes our Division is in reserve and then we're in reserve too. Sometimes for so much as a fortnight. When I was out here before I was in one place for more than two months. You must just take everything as it comes."