there, the spirit seemed to be busy somewhere else.

"Head up!" cried Jerome at last, brutally. "Heavens, man, don't skulk!"

Marshby straightened under the blow. It hit harder, as Jerome meant it
should, than any verbal rallying. It sent the man back over his own
life to the first stumble in it.

"I want you to look as if you heard drums and fife," Jerome explained,
with one of his quick smiles, that always wiped out former injury.

But the flush was not yet out of Marshby's face, and he answered,
bitterly, "I might run."

"I don't mind your looking as if you'd like to run and knew you
couldn't," said Jerome, dashing in strokes now in a happy certainty.

"Why couldn't I?" asked Marshby, still from that abiding scorn of his
own ways.

"Because you can't, that's all. Partly because you get the habit of
facing the music. I should like--" Wilmer had an unconsidered way of
entertaining his sitters, without much expenditure to himself; he
pursued a fantastic habit of talk to keep their blood moving, and did it
with the eye of the mind unswervingly on his work. "If I were you, I'd
do it. I'd write an essay on the muscular habit of courage. Your coward
is born weak-kneed. He shouldn't spill himself all over the place trying
to put on the spiritual make-up of a hero. He must simply strengthen
his knees. When they'll take him anywhere he requests, without buckling,
he wakes up and finds himself a field-marshal. _Voilà!_"