t do you mean?" She was startled.

"Till the war is over," he said, "and longer than that, perhaps, if La
Tir remains in Gray territory."

"You speak as if you thought you were going to lose!"

"Not while many of our soldiers are alive, if they continue to show the
spirit that they have shown so far; not unless two men can crush one man
in the automatic-gun-recoil age. But La Tir is in a tangent and already
in the Grays' possession, while we act on the defensive. So I should
hardly be flying over your garden again."

"But there's the telephone, Lanny, and here we are talking over it this
very minute!" she expostulated.

"You must remove it," he said. "If the Grays should discover it they
might form a suspicion that would put you in an unpleasant position."

The telephone had become almost a familiar institution in her thoughts.
Its secret had something of the fascination for her of magic.

"Nonsense!" she exclaimed. "I am going to be very lonely. I want to
learn how Feller is doing--I want to chat with you. So I decide not to
let it be taken out. And, you see, I have the tactical situation, as you
soldiers call it, all in my favor. The work of removal must be done at
my end of the line. You're quite helpless to enforce your wishes. And,
Lanny, if I ring the bell you'll answer, won't you?"

"I couldn't help it!" he replied.

"Until then! You've been fine about everything to-day!"

"Until then!"

When Marta left the tower she knew only that she was weary with the
mind-weariness, the body-weariness, the nerve-weariness of a spectator
who has shared the emotion of every actor in a drama of death and finds
the excitement that has kept her tense no longer a sustaining force.

As she went along the path, steps uncertain from sheer fatigue, her
sensibilities livened again at the sight of a picture. War, personal
war, in the form of the giant Stransky, was knocking at the kitchen
door. His two-days-old beard was matted with dust and there were dried
red spatters on his cheek. War's furnace flames seemed to have tanned
him; war seemed to be breathing from his deep chest; his big nose was
war's promontory. But the unexposed space of his forehead seemed
singularly white when he took off his cap as Minna came in answer to his
knock. Her yielding lips were parted, her eyes were bright with inquiry
and suspicion, her chin was firmly set.

"I came to see if you would let me kiss your hand again," said Stransky,
squinting