MRS. WHARTON. [_Overcome._] Oh, John! SYLVIA. But you came to church yesterday. JOHN. That was just a formal ceremony. I assisted passively, as a Jew might assist at the wedding of one of his Christian friends. SYLVIA. You stood when we stood, and knelt down, and seemed to pray. JOHN. I would do that if I were in a Roman Catholic church. That seemed to me only good manners. [_With a smile._] Do you think it was very deceitful? SYLVIA. I don’t quite see why you should strain at a gnat. JOHN. I don’t. It’s the camel I can’t swallow. I knew it would distress you if I refused to come to church. I didn’t want to seem a prig. But the other seems to me different. When I’m asked to take an active part in a ceremony that means nothing to me it’s quite another matter. I’d rather not tell a deliberate lie. And surely from your point of view it would be blasphemous. MRS. WHARTON. [_Occupied with her own thoughts._] How dreadful! JOHN. [_Going up to her and putting his arm round her._] Don’t be unhappy, mother. I can’t help feeling as I do. After all, these are matters that only concern oneself. SYLVIA. [_Reflecting._] Are they? JOHN. Surely. [_To his mother._] I would rather not have told you. I knew how much you’d take it to heart. But I was obliged to. And perhaps it’s better as it is. I hated the thought of deceiving you and father. Now let’s put it out of our minds. COLONEL WHARTON. John, have you forgotten, that in three weeks you’ll be going back to the Front? Sooner or later you’ll find yourself once more in the fighting line. Have you asked yourself what it will be like to face death without the help of Almighty God? JOHN. It’s always difficult to face death. COLONEL WHARTON. You wouldn’t be the first who found it easy to stand alone when all was going well and found it a very different thing in danger or illness. JOHN. [_With a smile._] When the devil was sick, the devil a monk would be. SYLVIA. Archie, Mrs. Littlewood’s elder boy, was badly wounded on the Somme. His battalion had to retreat and somehow or other he wasn’t picked up. He lay in the corner of a wood for three days and kept himself alive on a beet that he pulled out of the field. Heaven knows, I don’t want anything like that to happen to you, but are you sure your courage wouldn’t fail you then? Are you sure you wouldn’t call on God instinctively to help you? JOHN. And if I did, what of it? That wouldn’t be me, that mangled, bleeding, starved, delirious thing. It’s me now that speaks, now that I’m well and conscious and strong. It’s the real me now. I disclaim and disown anything I may feel or say when I’m tortured with pain and sickness. It would give my real self just as little as a prisoner on the rack gives the truth. SYLVIA. [_Looking at him fixedly._] You’re afraid of something like that happening, aren’t you? JOHN. Yes, I shouldn’t like my body to play me a dirty trick when I hadn’t the presence of mind to look after it. COLONEL WHARTON.