the conqueror, isn't it?" he asked playfully, for in the
company of women it pleased him to be playful.

"Conqueror? It's a big word!" she mused. "I hadn't thought of it in
connection with pouring tea"--which might be another way of saying that
she had just been thinking of it very hard and might be trying to find
whether it had a pleasant or an unpleasant side. Clearly, here was a
Marta different from any yet precipitated by the alchemy of war.

The resourceful variety of her! Oh, it was like the old days! It made
him feel young, as young as when he had been a colonel commanding the
garrison on the other side of the white posts. She had intelligence, yet
was at the same time distinctly feminine, with the gift of as much talk
about who should pour tea as about how to storm a redoubt. She did not
carry her mental wares on her sleeve. She flashed them in a way that
prompted curiosity as to the next exhibit. He had sought primarily,
selfishly, to be entertained at tea, and he was being entertained. To
want to win was his nature. He understood, too, that she wanted to win.
He liked that quality in her the more because it heightened the valve of
victory for him.

"Then, if you don't think of it in connection with pouring tea, let me
tell you what I think of when I sit on this veranda. I think of you as
hostess. You refuse to play the part!" he exclaimed with that
persistence, softened a little, perhaps, yet suggestive of the quality
characterized by the firm jaw and still eyes, which won his point at
staff councils. Again he was conscious of one of her sweeping glances of
appraisal, with just a glint of admiration and even approval tucked away
in the recesses of her smile.

"Suppose we compromise," she suggested thoughtfully, with the gravity of
one making a great concession. "Suppose you do the heavy work, and pour,
and I drop the sugar in the cups."

But Westerling always used a half concession as a lever to gain a full
concession.

"I'd really better do it all--act out the host and the conqueror!" he
declared. "One can't compromise principles."

"Oh! Why?" She was distinctly interested, leaning nearer to him and
playing a tattoo with one set of fingers on the back of the other hand.

"Anything except your doing all the honors leaves me in the same
invidious position," he answered. "It compounds my felony. It shows that
you do think that we failed by our conduct to show respect for your
property. It leaves me fee