you DO brave things.

NAPOLEON. So do you.

LADY. I! (With a sudden odd thought.) Oh! Are you a coward?

NAPOLEON (laughing grimly and pinching her cheek). That is the
one question you must never ask a soldier. The sergeant asks
after the recruit's height, his age, his wind, his limb, but
never after his courage. (He gets up and walks about with his
hands behind him and his head bowed, chuckling to himself.)

LADY (as if she had found it no laughing matter). Ah, you can
laugh at fear. Then you don't know what fear is.

NAPOLEON (coming behind the couch). Tell me this. Suppose you
could have got that letter by coming to me over the bridge at
Lodi the day before yesterday! Suppose there had been no other
way, and that this was a sure way--if only you escaped the
cannon! (She shudders and covers her eyes for a moment with her
hands.) Would you have been afraid?

LADY. Oh, horribly afraid, agonizingly afraid. (She presses her
hands on her heart.) It hurts only to imagine it.

NAPOLEON (inflexibly). Would you have come for the despatches?

LADY (overcome by the imagined horror). Don't ask me. I must have
come.