When Gene arrives back at Devon at the beginning of this chapter, he still reels from his shocking encounter with the mentally disturbed Leper. He seeks comfort in the familiar campus, but most of all he wants to see Finny — "and Phineas only."
He finds Finny in the midst of a snowball fight, child's play compared to the brutal adult reality of war that drives Leper "psycho." And while a blanket of snow covers both Devon and the Lepellier home in Vermont, the school campus seems to Gene to be innocent and Edenic, with the promise of an "untouched grove" — a sharp contrast to Leper's "death landscape."
The snowball fight, significantly, offers the last view of Finny at sports. It ranges chaotically, like blitzball, with little regard to anything but Finny's wild whims. And — in a foreshadowing of how Gene imagines his friend might behave in actual combat — Finny switches sides back and forth during the fight, betraying both teams for the sake of the disorderly game.
For Finny, Gene realizes, conflict always becomes play, a lively rather than a deadly rivalry. The thought comforts Gene, but shames him, too, in light of Leper's accusation. For Gene, it seems, even play can turn into war. Saddened by the revelation, Gene wants to find a separate peace again with Finny.
