rt continually assuring him
that he was despicable, he could not exist without making it, through
his actions, apparent to all men.

If the army had gone gloriously on he would be lost. If the din meant
that now his army's flags were tilted forward he was a condemned
wretch. He would be compelled to doom himself to isolation. If the
men were advancing, their indifferent feet were trampling upon his
chances for a successful life.

As these thoughts went rapidly through his mind, he turned upon them
and tried to thrust them away. He denounced himself as a villain. He
said that he was the most unutterably selfish man in existence. His
mind pictured the soldiers who would place their defiant bodies before
the spear of the yelling battle fiend, and as he saw their dripping
corpses on an imagined field, he said that he was their murderer.

Again he thought that he wished he was dead. He believed that he envied
a corpse. Thinking of the slain, he achieved a great contempt for some
of them, as if they were guilty for thus becoming lifeless. They might
have been killed by lucky chances, he said, before they had had
opportunities to flee or before they had been really tested. Yet they
would receive laurels from tradition. He cried out bitterly that their
crowns were stolen and their robes of glorious memories were shams.
However, he still said that it was a great pity he was not as they.

A defeat of the army had suggested itself to him as a means of escape
from the consequences of his fall. He considered, now, however, that
it was useless to think of such a possibility. His education had been
that success for that mighty blue machine was certain; that it would
make victories as a contrivance turns out buttons. He presently
discarded all his speculations in the other direction. He returned to
the creed of soldiers.

When he perceived again that it was not possible for the army to be
defeated, he tried to bethink him of a fine tale which he could take
back to his regiment, and with it turn the expected shafts of derision.

But, as he mortally feared these shafts, it became impossible for him
to invent a tale he felt he could trust. He experimented with many
schemes, but threw them aside one by one as flimsy. He was quick to
see vulnerable places in them all.

Furthermore, he was much afraid that some arrow of scorn might lay him
mentally low before he could raise his protecting tale.

He imagined the whole