"Tell you what you lack, Stafford. You lack interest in the war. You are too damned perfunctory. You take orders like an automaton, and you go execute them like an automaton. I don't say that they're not beautifully executed; they are. But the soul's not there. The other day at Tom's Brook I watched you walk your horse up to the muzzle of that fellow Wyndham's guns, and, by God! I don't believe you knew any more than an automaton that the guns were there!"
"Yes, I did—"
"Well, you may have known it with one half of your brain. You didn't with the other half. To a certain extent, I can read your hand. You've got a big war of your own, in a country of your own—eh?"
"Perhaps you are not altogether wrong. Such things happen sometimes."
"Yes, they do. But I think it a pity! This war"—he jerked his head toward the environing night—"is big enough, with horribly big stakes. If I were you, I'd drum the individual out of camp."
"Think only of the general? I wish I could!"
"Well, can't you?"
"No, not yet."
"There are only two things—barring disease—which can so split the brain in two—send the biggest part off, knight-errant or Saracen, into some No-Man's Country, and keep the other piece here in Virginia to crack invaders' skulls! One's love and one's hate—"
"Never both?"