“But you said he was fighting on the opposite side!” She looked up at him suddenly. “Was it during the Boer war?”
“Yes.”
He played with her fan, which he was holding, opening and closing it absently, bringing the sticks together with a little click. Then abruptly he shut it with a snap and laid it back in her lap.
“There are necessarily two sides to every question, and generally much to be said on both,” he remarked in his sharp, incisive manner. “The man who was fighting on the Boers’ side had been dismissed the Service, and I suppose, having the killing lust in him, he gave his services where they were appreciated.”
“That’s treachery,” she said.
He smiled at her cynically.
“I’d like your definition of treachery... I imagine you hold the popular exaggerated ideal of man’s duty to the State. Fine thinking is all very well in theory, but put it to the test, and where are you? ... This world is built for the practical, not for the sentimentalist. A thousand years hence we may be sufficiently civilised to make the ideal life possible. Then we shall be satisfied to recognise one another’s good qualities, instead of overlooking them in the eagerness of our eternal search after the bad. But that will entail social and political revolution—and the abolition of war.”
“You say that!” she cried, catching on to the part of his speech which she understood.—“You!—a soldier!”
“My only right to the title now is that of soldier of fortune,” he replied.
She looked a little surprised.