"I occasionally dip into Tennyson," Val replied, settling himself in an easy chair. "I can't understand modern verse as a rule, it's too clever for me, and the fellows who write it always seem to go in for such gloomy subjects. I don't like gloomy books, I like stuff that rests and refreshes you. There are enough sad things in life without writing stories about them. I can read the 'Idylls of the King,' but I can't read Bernard Shaw."
"Nor anybody else," said Bernard. He fixed his eyes on Val: eyes like his cousin's in form and colour, large, and so black under their black lashes that the pupil was almost indistinguishable from the iris, but smouldering in a perpetual glow, while Hyde's were clear and indifferent. "You're a good sort to have come down to look after me. I don't feel very brash tonight. Oh Val! oh Val! I know I'm a brute, a coarse-minded, foul-mouthed brute. I usedn't to be. When I was twenty-five, if any man had said before me what I say of Laura, I'd have kicked him out of his own house. Why don't you kick me?"
"I am not violent."
"Ain't you? I am." He flung out his arm. "Give me your hand." Val complied, amused or touched: as often happened when they were alone, he remained on the borderline. But it was taken in no affectionate clasp. Bernard's grip closed on him, tighter and tighter, till the nails were driven into his palm. "Is that painful?" Clowes asked with his Satanic grin. "Glad of it. I'm in pain too. I've got neuritis in my spine and I can't sleep for it. I haven't had any proper sleep for a week.—Oh my God, my God, my God! do you think I'd grumble if that were all? I can't, I can't lie on my back all my life playing patience or fiddling over secondhand penknives! I was born for action. Action, Val! I'm not a curate. I'd like to smash something—crush it to a jelly." Val mincingly pointed out that such a consummation was not far off, but he was ignored. "Oh damn the war! and damn England too—what did we go to fight for? What asses we were! Did we ever believe in a reason? Give me these ten years over again and I wouldn't be such a fool. Who cares whether we lick Germany or Germany licks England? I don't."
"I do."
Bernard stared at him, incredulous. "What—'freedom and honour' and all the rest of it?"
"In a defensive war—"
"Oh for God's sake! I've just had my supper."
"—any man who won't fight for his country deserves to be shot."
"You combine the brains of a rabbit with the morals of a eunuch."