They could retire with perfect self-respect and make excuses to the stars.
He wondered what those men had eaten that they could be in such haste to force their way to grim chances of death.

As he watched his envy grew until he thought that he wished to change lives with one of them.
He would have liked to have used a tremendous force, he said, throw off himself and become a better.

Swift pictures of himself, apart, yet in himself, came to him--a blue desperate figure leading lurid charges with one knee forward and a broken blade high--a blue, determined figure standing before a crimson and steel assault, getting calmly killed on a high place before the eyes of all.

He thought of the magnificent pathos of his dead body.
These thoughts uplifted him.

He felt the quiver of war desire.