dent as the
talisman of his feelings--his controlled feelings! Always his controlled
feelings!

She saw Feller leaning against the moist wall of the dank tunnel,
suffering as it had never seemed to her that man could suffer, his agony
an irresistible plea. She saw Westerling, so conscious of his strength,
directing his chessmen in a death struggle against Partow. And he was
coming to this house as his headquarters when the final test of the
strength of the Titans was made.

She hoped that her mother was still sleeping; and she had seconds when
she was startled by her own calmness. Again, the faces of the children
in her school were as clear as in life. She breathed her gratitude that
the procession in which they moved to the rear was hours ago out of the
theatre of danger. In the simplicity of big things, her duty was to
teach them, a future generation, no less than Feller's duty was to the
pursuing shadow of his conscience. She should see war, alive, naked,
bloody, and she would tell her children what she had seen as a warning.

Silence, except an occasional rifle-shot--silence and the darkness
before dawn which would, she knew, concentrate the lightnings around the
house. She glanced into her mother's room and marvelled as at a miracle
to find her sleeping. Then she stole down-stairs and opened the outer
door of the dining-room. A step or two brought her to the edge of the
veranda. There she paused and leaned against one of the stone pillars.
Dellarme himself was in a half-reclining position, his back to a tree.
He seemed to be nodding. Except for a few on watch over the sand-bags,
his men were stretched on the earth, moving restlessly at intervals,
either in an effort to sleep or waking suddenly after a spell of
harassed unconsciousness.

XXVI

FELLER IS TEMPTED

With the first sign of dawn there was a movement of shadowy forms taking
position in answer to low-spoken commands. The search-light yielded its
vigil to the wide-spread beam out of the east, and the detail of the
setting where Marta was to watch the play of one of man's passions,
which he dares not permit the tender flesh of woman to share, grew
distinct. Bayonets were fixed on the rifles that lay along the parapet
of sand-bags in front of the row of brown shoulders. Back of them in the
yard was a section of infantry in reserve, also with bayonets fixed,
ready to fill the place of any who fell out of line, a doctor and
stretchers to care for