“But when you’re dead you don’t matter any more,” she said.
He was silenced for a moment.
“But the result matters,” he said. “It matters whether we settle the Mahdi or not.”
“Not to you—nor me—we don’t care about Khartoum.”
“You want to have room to live in: and somebody has to make room.”
“But I don’t want to live in the desert of Sahara—do you?” she replied, laughing with antagonism.
“I don’t—but we’ve got to back up those who do.
“Why have we?”
“Where is the nation if we don’t?”
“But we aren’t the nation. There are heaps of other people who are the nation.”