It cannot be!" she was thinking. Her glimpse of him
had no more interest for her at this moment of preoccupation than any
other familiar object of the landscape.

"The guns! The guns! How I love the guns!" he was thinking.

She was almost past him before he realized her presence, which he
acknowledged by a startled movement and a step forward as he took off
his hat. She paused. His eyes were glowing like coals under a blower as
he looked at her and again at the batteries, seeming to include her with
the guns in the spell of his fervid abstraction. He was unconscious that
he had ever been anything but a soldier. His throat was athirst for
words and his words craved a listening ear for all the pictures of the
machinery of war in motion that crowded his imagination. To him the
demon was a fair, beckoning god in cloth of gold--a god of hope and
fortune.

"Frontier closed last night to prevent intelligence about our
preparations leaking out--Lanny's plan all alive--the guns coming," he
went on, his shoulders stiffening, his chin drawing in, his features
resolute and beaming with the ardor of youth in action--"troops moving
here and there to their places--engineers preparing the
defences--automatics at critical points with the infantry--field-wires
laid--field-telephones set up--the wireless spitting--the caissons
full--planes and dirigibles ready--search-lights in position"

There the torrent of his broken sentences was checked A shadow passed in
front of him. He came out of his trance of imageries of activities, so
vividly clear to his military mind, to realize that Marta was abruptly
leaving.

"Miss Galland!" he called urgently. "Firing may commence at any minute.
You must not go into town!"

"But I must!" she declared, speaking over her shoulder while she paused.
It was clear that no warning would prevail against her determined mood.

"Then I shall go with you!" he said, starting toward her with a light
step, in keeping with the gallantry of a man even younger than his
years. He spoke in a tone of protective masculine authority, as an
officer might to a woman of whom he was fond when he saw her exposing
herself to danger. He would escort her; he would see that no harm befell
her. The impulse was spontaneous in an illusion free of the gardener's
part. But he saw her lips tighten and a frown gather.

"It is not necessary, thank you!" she answered, more coldly than she had
ever spoken to him. This had a magically q