"Decide!" the other repeated. "No, not that, yet! You have got this idea into your head because you are romantic. You think you are ruined and that the future doesn't matter. You will find it does. This is no place for poetry and romance—my God, no! It's a fiery furnace. In barracks we should burn the romance out of you in twenty-four hours."
"If I've got more in me than any man who loves adventure ought to have, then I want it burned out," said Max.
"Adventures will cost you less elsewhere," almost sneered DeLisle.
"I don't ask to get them cheap," Max still insisted. "Though I've got nothing to pay with, except myself, my blood, and flesh, and muscles."
"That's good coin," exclaimed the elder, warming again. "Yet we can't take it. You may think you know what you mean. But you don't know what the Legion means. I do. I've had nearly twenty years of it."
"You love it?"
"Yes, it is my life. But—I have to remind you, I entered it as an officer. There is all the difference."
"At least I should be a soldier. I know what a soldier's hardships are."
"Ah, not in the Legion!"
"It can't kill me."