Calpurnius: The centurion's the god, then? Ask me, his Captain, who
tells him off. Am I the god, then? Ask my Colonel, who tells me off.
Is it my Colonel, my General? Ask the Emperor in Rome who, for a
fault, strips them of their command and brings them home. Soldiers are
men trained to endurance by a hard discipline, cursed, ridiculed,
punished like children but with a man's punishments, so that when the
great ordeal comes they may move, fight, die, like a machine. The
soldier! He suffers discomfort, burns in the desert, freezes in the
snow at another's orders. He has no liberty, he must not argue, he
must not answer; and he gets an obol a day, and in the end--in the
end, a man, he gives his life without complaint, without faltering,
gladly as a mere trifle in the business of the day, so that his
country may endure. And what's his reward? What does he get? A woman's
smile in his hour of furlough. That's his reward. He takes it. Blame
him who will. The woman thinks him a god, and he does not tell her of
the barrack square. Good luck to him and her, I say. But at the last,
there's the long parting, just as you and I part in the forest of
Anderida to-night. Other soldiers will say good-bye here on this spot
to other women in centuries from now. Their trouble will be heavy, my
dear, but they'll obey the soldier's law.
Gleva: Very well, then! Each to his own! I, too, will obey that law.
(_She confronts him, erect and, strong._)