Francis! You're a tin soldier, and I've just ceased to be a tin soldier.
If there was the smallest chance of being useful in the army, by which
I mean standing up and being shot at because I am English, I would not
dream of throwing it up. But there's no such chance."

Michael paused a moment in his sermon, and beat out the ashes from his
pipe against the grate.

"Anyhow the chance is too remote," he said. "All the nations with armies
and navies are too much afraid of each other to do more than growl. Also
I happen to want to do something different with my life, and you can't
do anything unless you believe in what you are doing. I want to leave
behind me something more than the portrait of a tin soldier in the
dining-room at Ashbridge. After all, isn't an artistic profession
the greatest there is? For what counts, what is of value in the
world to-day? Greek statues, the Italian pictures, the symphonies of
Beethoven, the plays of Shakespeare. The people who have made beautiful
things are they who are the benefactors of mankind. At least, so the
people who love beautiful things think."

Francis glanced at his cousin. He knew this interesting vital side of
Michael; he was aware, too, that had anybody except himself been in the
room, Michael could not have shown it. Perhaps there might be people
to whom he could show it but certainly they were not those among whom
Michael's life was passed.

"Go on," he said encouragingly. "You're ripping, Mike."

"Well, the nuisance of it is that the things I am ripping about appear
to father to be a sort of indoor game. It's all right to play the piano,