leather pouches for the revolver, field glasses and
maps, with sword-belt of the same material.

Oftentimes when Don Marcelo saw them setting forth together toward Saint
Honore d'Eylau, he would wax very indignant.

"They are juggling with God. . . . This is most unreasonable! How could
He grant such contrary petitions? . . . Ah, these women!"

And then, with that superstition which danger awakens, he began to
fear that his sister-in-law might cause some grave disaster to his son.
Divinity, fatigued with so many contradictory prayers was going to turn
His back and not listen to any of them. Why did not this fatal woman
take herself off? . . .

He felt as exasperated at her presence in his home as he had at the
beginning of hostilities. Dona Luisa was still innocently repeating her
sister's statements, submitting them to the superior criticism of her
husband. In this way, Don Marcelo had learned that the victory of the
Marne had never really happened; it was an invention of the allies.
The German generals had deemed it prudent to retire through profound
strategic foresight, deferring till a little later the conquest of
Paris, and the French had done nothing but follow them over the ground
which they had left free. That was all. She knew the opinions of
military men of neutral countries; she had been talking in Biarritz with
some people of unusual intelligence; she knew what the German papers
were saying about it. Nobody over there believed that yarn about the
Marne. The people did not even know that there had been such a battle.

"Your sister said that?" interrupted Desnoyers, pale with wrath and
amazement.

But he could do nothing but keep on longing for the bodily
transformation of this enemy planted under his roof. Ay, if she could
only be changed into a man! If only the evil genius of her husband could
but take her place for a brief half hour! . . .

"But the war still goes on," said Dona Luisa in artless perplexity. "The
enemy is still in France. . . . What good did the battle of the Marne
do?"

She accepted his explanations with intelligent noddings of the head,
seeming to take them all in, and an hour afterwards would be repeating
the same doubts.

She, nevertheless, began to evince a mute hostility toward her sister.
Until now, she had been tolerating her enthusiasms in favor of her
husband's country because she always considered family ties of more
importance than the rivalries of nations. Just becau