"I suppose it is," Tietjens said dully. "Yes, certainly it is. You're quite right. It's the incidental degeneration of the heroic impulse: if the heroic impulse has too even a strain put on it the incidental degeneration gets the upper hand. That accounts for the Brownies . . . all the Brownies . . . turning squits. . . ."
"Then why do you go on with it?" Sylvia said. "God knows I could wangle you out if you'd back me in the least little way."
Tietjens said:
"Thanks! I prefer to remain in it. . . . How else am I to get a living? . . ."
"You know then," Sylvia exclaimed almost shrilly. "You know that they won't have you back in the office if they can find a way of getting you out. . . ."
"Oh, they'll find that!" Tietjens said. . . . He continued his other speech: "When we go to war with France," he said dully. . . . And Sylvia knew he was only now formulating his settled opinion so as not to have his active brain to give to the discussion. He must be thinking hard of the Wannop girl! With her littleness: her tweed-skirtishness. . . . A provincial miniature of herself, Sylvia Tietjens. . . . If she, then, had been miniature, provincial. . . . But Tietjens' words cut her as if she had been lashed with a dog-whip. "We shall behave more creditably," he had said, "because there will be less heroic impulse about it. We shall . . . half of us . . . be ashamed of ourselves. So there will be much less incidental degeneration."
Sylvia who, by that was listening to him, abandoned the consideration of Miss Wannop and the pretence that obsessed her, of Tietjens talking to the girl, against a background of books at Macmaster's party. She exclaimed:
"Good God! What are you talking about? . . ."
Tietjens went on:
"About our next war with France. . . . We're the natural enemies of the French. We have to make our bread either by robbing them or making catspaws of them. . . ."