]
SIR JOHN. When you chose your course----
MORE. Chose!
SIR JOHN. You placed yourself in opposition to every feeling in her.
You knew this might come. It may come again with another of my sons.
MORE. I would willingly change places with any one of them.
SIR JOHN. Yes--I can believe in your unhappiness. I cannot conceive
of greater misery than to be arrayed against your country. If I
could have Hubert back, I would not have him at such a price--no, nor
all my sons. 'Pro patri mori'--My boy, at all events, is happy!
MORE. Yes!
SIR JOHN. Yet you can go on doing what you are! What devil of pride
has got into you, Stephen?
MORE. Do you imagine I think myself better than the humblest private
fighting out there? Not for a minute.
SIR JOHN. I don't understand you. I always thought you devoted to
Katherine.
MORE. Sir John, you believe that country comes before wife and
child?
SIR JOHN. I do.
MORE. So do I.
SIR JOHN. [Bewildered] Whatever my country does or leaves undone, I
no more presume to judge her than I presume to judge my God. [With
all the exaltation of the suffering he has undergone for her] My
country!
MORE. I would give all I have--for that creed.
SIR JOHN. [Puzzled] Stephen, I've never looked on you as a crank;
I always believed you sane and honest. But this is--visionary mania.
MORE. Vision of what might be.
SIR JOHN. Why can't you be content with what the grandest nation--
the grandest men on earth--have found good enough for them? I've
known them, I've seen what they could suffer, for our country.
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