Sylvia.
Archie, Mrs. Littlewood’s elder boy, was badly wounded on the Somme. His battalion had to retreat and somehow or other he wasn’t picked up. He lay in the corner of a wood for three days and kept himself alive on a beet that he pulled out of the field. Heaven knows, I don’t want anything like that to happen to you, but are you sure your courage wouldn’t fail you then? Are you sure you wouldn’t call on God instinctively to help you?
John.
And if I did, what of it? That wouldn’t be me, that mangled, bleeding, starved, delirious thing. It’s me now that speaks, now that I’m well and conscious and strong. It’s the real me now. I disclaim and disown anything I may feel or say when I’m tortured with pain and sickness. It would give my real self just as little as a prisoner on the rack gives the truth.
Sylvia.
[Looking at him fixedly.] You’re afraid of something like that happening, aren’t you?
John.
Yes, I shouldn’t like my body to play me a dirty trick when I hadn’t the presence of mind to look after it.
Colonel Wharton.
Have you ever been in real danger since you—since you began to think like this?