My companions left me to myself.  I sat down on the edge of a small shell-hole some distance in front of the Hospital.  I had been advised not to remain too near the building lest it might fall on me.  The paved floor of the Place stretched out around me like a tremendous plain, seeming the vaster because my eyes were now so much nearer to the level of it.  On a bit of facade to the left the word “Cycle " stood out in large black letters on a white ground.  This word and myself were the sole living things in the Square.  In the distance a cloud of smoke up a street showed that a house was burning.  The other streets visible from where I sat gave no sign whatever.  The wind, strong enough throughout my visit to the Front, was now stronger than ever.  All the window-frames and doors in the Hospital were straining and creaking in the wind.  The loud sound of guns never ceased.  A large British aeroplane hummed and buzzed at a considerable height overhead.  Dust drove along.

I said to myself:  “A shell might quite well fall here any moment.”

I was afraid.  But I was less afraid of a shell than of the intense loneliness.  Rheims was inhabited; Arras was inhabited.  In both cities there were postmen and newspapers, shops, and even cafes.  But in Ypres there was nothing.  Every street was a desert; every room in every house was empty.  Not a dog roamed in search of food.  The weight upon my heart was sickening.  To avoid complications I had promised the Staff officer not to move from the Place until he returned; neither of us had any desire to be hunting for each other in the sinister labyrinth of the town’s thoroughfares.  I was, therefore, a prisoner in the Place, condemned to solitary confinement.  I ardently wanted my companions to come back. . . .  Then I heard echoing sounds of voices and footsteps.  Two British soldiers appeared round a corner and passed slowly along the Square.  In the immensity of the Square they made very small figures.  I had a wish to accost them, but Englishmen do not do these things, even in Ypres.  They glanced casually at me; I glanced casually at them, carefully pretending that the circumstances of my situation were entirely ordinary.

I felt safer while they were in view; but when they had gone I was afraid again.  I was more than afraid; I was inexplicably uneasy.  I made the sketch simply because I had said that I would make it.  And as soon as it was done, I jumped up out of the hole and walked about, peering down streets for the reappearance of my friends.  I was very depressed, very irritable; and I honestly wished that I had never accepted any invitation to visit the Front.  I somehow thought I might never get out of Ypres alive.  When at length I caught sight of the Staff officer I felt instantly relieved.  My depression, however, remained for hours afterwards.