more of
your soldiers get out of control," she went on.

"I can do that, yes," he said. "But we are to make this a staff
headquarters and must start at once to put the house in readiness."

"General Westerling's headquarters?" she inquired.

He parried the question with a frown. Staff-officers never give
information. They receive information and transmit orders.

"I know General Westerling. You will tell him that my mother, Mrs.
Galland, and our maid and myself are very tired from the entertainment
he has given us, unasked, and we need sleep to-night. So you will leave
us until morning and that door, sir, is the one out into the grounds."

The staff-officer bowed and went out by that door, glad to get away from
Marta's eyes. His inspection of the premises with a view to plans for
staff accommodation could wait. Westerling would not be here for two
days at least.

"Whew! What energy she has!" he thought. "I never had anybody make me
feel so contemptibly unlike a gentleman in my life."

Yet Marta, returning to the hall, had to steady herself in a dizzy
moment against the wall. Complete reaction had come. She craved sleep as
if it were the one true, real thing in the world. She craved sleep for
the clarity of mind that comes with the morning light. In the haziness
of fleecy thought, as slumber drew its soft clouds around her, her last
conscious visions were the pleasant ones rising free of a background of
horror: of Feller's smile when he went back to his automatic for good;
of Dellarme's smile as he was dying; of Stransky's smile as Minna gave
him hope; and of Hugo's face as he uttered his flute-like cry of
protest. In her ears were the haunting calmness and contained force of
Lanstron's voice over the telephone. She was pleased to think that she
had not lost her temper in her talk with the staff-officer. No, she had
not flared once in indignation. It was as if she had absorbed some of
Lanny's own self-control. Lanny would approve of her in that scene with
an officer of the Grays. And she realized that a change had come over
her--a change inexplicable and telling--and she was tired--oh, so tired!
It had been exhausting work, indeed, for one woman, though she had been
around the world, making war on two armies.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, all too flushed with energy, the energy of movement, to think
of the feud between Hugo and Pilzer, Fracasse's men had sped along the
castle road. Lit