LOUKA.
Don’t trifle with me, please. An officer should not trifle with a servant.
SERGIUS.
(touching the arm with a merciless stroke of his forefinger). That was no trifle, Louka.
LOUKA.
No. (Looking at him for the first time.) Are you sorry?
SERGIUS.
(with measured emphasis, folding his arms). I am never sorry.
LOUKA.
(wistfully). I wish I could believe a man could be so unlike a woman as that. I wonder are you really a brave man?
SERGIUS.
(unaffectedly, relaxing his attitude). Yes: I am a brave man. My heart jumped like a woman’s at the first shot; but in the charge I found that I was brave. Yes: that at least is real about me.
LOUKA.
Did you find in the charge that the men whose fathers are poor like mine were any less brave than the men who are rich like you?
SERGIUS.
(with bitter levity.) Not a bit. They all slashed and cursed and yelled like heroes. Psha! the courage to rage and kill is cheap. I have an English bull terrier who has as much of that sort of courage as the whole Bulgarian nation, and the whole Russian nation at its back. But he lets my groom thrash him, all the same. That’s your soldier all over! No, Louka, your poor men can cut throats; but they are afraid of their officers; they put up with insults and blows; they stand by and see one another punished like children—-aye, and help to do it when they are ordered. And the officers!—-well (with a short, bitter laugh) I am an officer. Oh, (fervently) give me the man who will defy to the death any power on earth or in heaven that sets itself up against his own will and conscience: he alone is the brave man.
LOUKA.
How easy it is to talk! Men never seem to me to grow up: they all have schoolboy’s ideas. You don’t know what true courage is.
SERGIUS.
(ironically). Indeed! I am willing to be instructed.