upted hurriedly, wildly, to stop him from going
further, only to find that her intonation was such that it was drawing
him on.

"That fatality seemed to be working itself out to the soldier so much
older than yourself in renewed youth, in another form of ambition. I
hoped that there was more than the cause that led you to trust me. I
hoped--"

Was he testing her? Was he playing a part of his own to make certain
that she was not playing one? She looked up swiftly for answer. There
was no gainsaying what she saw in his eyes. It was beating into hers
with the power of an overwhelming masculine passion and a maturity of
intellect as his egoism admitted a comrade to its throne. Such is ever
the way of the man in the forties when the clock strikes for him. But
who could know better the craft of courtship than one of Westerling's
experience? He was fighting for victory; to gratify a desire.

"I did not expect this--I--" The words escaped tumultuously and
chokingly.

She heard all the voices in chorus: "Look out! Look out!" And then the
voice of Feller alone, insinuating, with a sinister mischievousness:
"What more could you ask? Now that you have him, hold him! For God and
country--for our dear Brown land!"

Hold a man who was making love to her by the tricks of the courtesan!
But what kind of love? He was bending so close to her that she felt his
breath on her cheek burning hot, and she was sickeningly conscious that
he was looking her over in that point-by-point manner which she had felt
across the tea-table at the hotel. This horrible thing in his glance she
had sometimes seen in strangers on her travels, and it had made her
think that she was wise to carry a little revolver. She wanted to strike
him.

"Confess! Confess!" called all her own self-respect. "Make an end to
your abasement!"

"Confession, after the Browns have given up Bordir! Confession that
makes Lanny, not Westerling, your dupe!" came the reply, which might
have been telegraphed into her mind from the high, white forehead of
Partow bending over his maps. "Confession, betraying the cause of the
right against the wrong; the three to the conquering five! No! You are
in the things. You may not retreat now."

For a few seconds only the duel of argument thundered in her
temples--seconds in which her lips were parted and quivering and her
eyes dilated with an agitation which the man at her side could interpret
as he pleased. A prompting devil--a devil rou