He appeared to me a tragic figure warring against a doom.
At first I expected every day to receive an agonised message from Mrs.
Boyce announcing his death.

Then, as is the way of humans, the keenness of my apprehension grew blunted, until, at last, I took his continued existence as a matter of course.

I wrote him a few friendly letters, to which he replied in the same strain.

And so the months went on.
Looking over my diary I find that these months were singularly uneventful as far as the lives of those dealt with in this chronicle were concerned.

In the depths of our souls we felt the long-drawn-out agony of the war, with its bitter humiliations, its heartrending disappointments.