"By men of your nervous organization. Your going out would be sheer waste."
"Why not?" Does it matter what becomes of me?"
"No. It doesn't. It matters, though, that you'll be taking a better man's place."
Now Colin really did want to go out and fight, as he had always wanted to follow Jerrold's lead; he wanted it so badly that it seemed to him a form of self-indulgence; and this idea of taking a better man's place so worked on him that he had almost decided to give it up, since that was the sacrifice required of him, when he told Queenie what Eliot had said.
"All I can say is," said Queenie, "that if you don't go out I shall give you up. I've no use for men with cold feet."
"Can't you see," said Colin (he almost hated Queenie in that moment), "what I'm afraid of? Being a damned nuisance. That's what Eliot says I'll be. I don't know how he knows."
"He doesn't know everything. If my brother tried to stop my going to the front I'd jolly soon tell him to go to hell. I swear, Colin, if you back out of it I won't speak to you again. I'm not asking you to do anything I funk myself."
"Oh, shut up. I'm going all right. Not because you've asked me, but because I want to."
"If you didn't I should think you'd feel pretty rotten when I'm out with my Field Ambulance," said Queenie.
"Damn your Field Ambulance!… No, I didn't mean that, old thing; it's splendid of you to go. But you'd no business to suppose I funked. I may funk. Nobody knows till they've tried. But I was going all right till Eliot put me off."