It had kept him from intimacy with his friends lest an impulsive word should betray him.
Lieutenant Sutch did not wonder that in the end it had brought about this irretrievable mistake; for Lieutenant Sutch understood.
"Did you ever read 'Hamlet' ?" he asked.
"Of course," said Harry, in reply.
"Ah, but did you consider it?
The same disability is clear in that character.

The thing which he foresaw, which he thought over, which he imagined in the act and in the consequence--that he shrank from, upbraiding himself even as you have done.

Yet when the moment of action comes, sharp and immediate, does he fail?
No, he excels, and just by reason of that foresight.

I have seen men in the Crimea, tortured by their imaginations before the fight--once the fight had begun you must search amongst the Oriental fanatics for their match.

'Am I a coward ?' Do you remember the lines?
Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain?
Breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?
There's the case in a nutshell.