The general said agitatedly:
"No! No! . . . You've got quite enough on your back as it is. Your confidential report states that you are suspected of having too great common interests with the French. That's what makes the whole position so impossible. . . . I'll get Thurston to write something. He's a good man, Thurston. Reliable. . . ." Tietjens shuddered a little. The general went on astonishingly:
"'But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near:
And yonder all before me lie
Deserts of vast eternity!' . . .
That's a general's life in this accursed war. . . . You think all generals are illiterate fools. But I have spent a great deal of time in reading, though I never read anything written later than the seventeenth century."
Tietjens said:
"I know, sir. . . . You made me read Clarendon's History of the Great Rebellion when I was twelve."
The general said:
"In case we . . . I shouldn't like . . . In short . . ." He swallowed: it was singular to see him swallow. He was lamentably thin when you looked at the man and not the uniform.
Tietjens thought:
"What's he nervous about? He's been nervous all the morning."