understand you only came back last
night from your----No word I can use would give what I feel about
that. I don't know how things stand now between you and Katherine;
but I tell you this, Stephen: you've tried her these last two months
beyond what any woman ought to bear!

[MORE makes a gesture of pain.]

SIR JOHN. When you chose your course----

MORE. Chose!

SIR JOHN. You placed yourself in opposition to every feeling in her.
You knew this might come. It may come again with another of my sons.

MORE. I would willingly change places with any one of them.

SIR JOHN. Yes--I can believe in your unhappiness. I cannot conceive
of greater misery than to be arrayed against your country. If I
could have Hubert back, I would not have him at such a price--no, nor
all my sons. 'Pro patri mori'--My boy, at all events, is happy!

MORE. Yes!

SIR JOHN. Yet you can go on doing what you are! What devil of pride
has got into you, Stephen?

MORE. Do you imagine I think myself better than the humblest private
fighting out there? Not for a minute.

SIR JOHN. I don't understand you. I always thought you devoted to
Katherine.

MORE. Sir John, you believe that country comes before wife and
child?

SIR JOHN. I do.

MORE. So do I.

SIR JOHN. [Bewildered] Whatever my country does or leaves undone, I
no more presume to judge her than I presume to judge my God. [With
all the exaltation of the suffering he has undergone for her] My
country!

MORE. I would give all I have--for that creed.

SIR JOHN. [Puzzled] Stephen, I've never looked on you as a crank;
I always believed you sane and honest. But this is--visionary mania.

MORE. Vision of what might be.

SIR JOHN. Why can't you be content with what the grandest nation--
the grandest men on earth--have found good enough for them? I've
known them, I've seen what they could suffer, for our country.

MORE. Sir John, imagine what the last two months have been to me!
To see people turn away in the street--old friends pass me as if I
were a wall! To dread the post! To go to bed every night with the
sound of hooting in my ears! To know that my name is never referred
to without contempt----

SIR JOHN. You have your new friends. Plenty of them, I understand.

MORE. Does that make up for being spat at as I was last night? Your
battles are fool's play to it.

The stir and rustle of the crowd in the street grows louder.
SIR JO