me home, after they have been beaten as
they will be--'"

"What!" Westerling exploded.

All the force of his being had to take umbrage at this. Beaten! Marta
saw the rigid, unyielding Westerling who had cried, "We shall win!" when
she made her second prophecy. But the comparison did not occur to him.
Nothing occurred to him but red anger, until the first dart of reason
warned him, a chief of staff, that a private had made him completely
lose his temper. He recovered his poise with a laugh and without even
glancing at Marta.

"Well, we might as well hear the reasons for your expert opinion," he
said, his satire a trifle hoarse after the strain of his emotion.

"Because the Browns fight for their homes!" answered Hugo "When the
great crisis comes they have a reserve strength that we have not:
conscience, the intelligent conscience of this age that cannot fool
itself with false enthusiasm continually. They are fighting as I should
pray that I might fight if the Browns invaded our country; as I might
fight against a murderous burglar. For I will fight, sir, I will fight
with my face to the white posts, but not with my back to them! The
Browns have no more right to cross our frontier than we have to cross
theirs!"

There was a perceptible shudder on Marta's part, an abrupt, tossing
elevation of her head. She stared at the spot where Dellarme had lain in
the garden. Dellarme's smile was back on her lips; it seemed graven
there. Her eyes, which Westerling could not see, were leaping flames.

"I'm afraid you will not have the chance," Westerling observed, as he
returned the letter to Hugo, its reading unfinished. "What if every man
held your views? What would become of the army and the nation?" he
demanded.

"Why, I think I have made that plain," replied Hugo. He appeared no less
weary than Westerling over continual beating of the air to no purpose.
"We should retreat to our own soil, where we belong."

"And you are ready to be shot for that principle?"

The question was sharp and final.

"Yes, if being shot for what I did is dying for it--though I prefer to
live for it!" said Hugo, still without any pose. He refused to play for
a chapter in the future book of martyrs to peace. This was the
irritating thing about him to a soldier, who deprecated all kinds of
personal bravado and show as against the efficiency of the modern
military machine, when men were supposed to respond to duty in the face
of death as automatic