"I was released to-day, and, as I said, I shall be
court-martialled again to-day fortnight. It'll be two years this time.
But they can't break me."
Mr. Lavender gasped, for at the word "courtmartialled" a dreadful doubt
had assailed him.
"Are you," he stammered--"you are not--you cannot be a Conscientious
Objector?"
"I can," said the young man.
Mr. Lavender half rose in horror.
"I don't approve," he ejaculated; "I do not approve of you."
"Of course not," said the young man with a little smile at once proud
and sad, "who does? If you did I shouldn't have to eat like this, nor
should I have the consciousness of spiritual loneliness to sustain me.
You look on me as a moral outcast, as a leper. That is my comfort and
my strength. For though I have a genuine abhorrence of war, I know full
well that I could not stick this if it were not for the feeling that
I must not and will not lower myself to the level of mere opportunists
like you, and sink myself in the herd of men in the street."
At hearing himself thus described Mr. Lavender flushed.
"I yield to no one," he said, "in my admiration of principle. It is
because of my principles that I regard you as a----"
"Shirker," put in the young man calmly.
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