repulse.

"How we must have punished them!" he exclaimed to his lieutenant. "How
we must have mowed them down! Lanstron certainly knew what he was
doing."

"You mean that he knew how we should mow them down?" asked Marta.

Not until she spoke did he realize that she was standing near him.

"Why, naturally! If we hadn't mowed them down his plan would have
failed. Mowing them down was the only way to hold them back," he said;
and seeing her horror made haste to add: "Miss Galland, now you know
what a ghastly business war is. It will be worse here than there."

"Yes," she said blankly. Her colorless cheeks, her drooping underlip
convinced him that now, with a little show of masculine authority, he
would gain his point.

"You and your mother must go!" he said firmly.

This was the very thing to whip her thoughts back from the knoll. He
was thunderstruck at the transformation: hot color in her cheeks, eyes
aflame, lips curving around a whirlwind of words.

"You name the very reason why I wish to stay. Why do you want to save
the women? Why shouldn't they bear their share? Why don't you want them
to see men mowed down? Is it because you are ashamed of your profession?
Why, I ask?"

The problem of dealing with an angry woman breaking a shell fire of
questions over his head had not been ready-solved in the captain's
curriculum like other professional problems, nor was it mentioned in the
official instructions about the defences of the Galland house. He aimed
to smile soothingly in the helplessness of man in presence of feminine
fury.

"It is an old custom," he was saying, but she had turned away.

"Picking flowers! What mockery! Lanny's plan--mow them down! mow them
down! mow them down!" she went on, more to herself than to him, as she
dropped the chrysanthemums on the veranda table.

In a fire of resolution she hastened back down the terrace steps. The
Grays and the Browns were fighting in their way for their causes; she
must fight in her way for hers. Stopping before Feller, she seemed
taller than her usual self and quivering with impatience.

"Have you connected the wire to the telephone yet?" she asked abruptly.

"No, not yet," he answered.

"Then please come with me to the tower!"

Whatever his fears, he held them within the serene bounds of the
gardener's personality, while his covert glimpse of her warned him
against the mistake of trying to dam the current of a passion running so
strong.

"Certainl