“ But you’d only make them to be pulled down again when the armies had done with them. It seems just as much a game.”
“ If you call war a game.”
“ What is it?”
“ It’s about the most serious business there is, fighting.”
A sense of hard separateness came over her.
“ Why is fighting more serious than anything else?” she asked.
“ You either kill or get killed—and I suppose it is serious enough, killing.”
“ But when you’re dead you don’t matter any more,” she said.
He was silenced for a moment.
“ But the result matters,” he said. “It matters whether we settle the Mahdi or not.”
“ Not to you—nor me—we don’t care about Khartoum.”
“ You want to have room to live in: and somebody has to make room.”
“ But I don’t want to live in the desert of Sahara—do you?” she re
