sed by that thing in his
eyes--urging a finesse in double-dealing which only devils understand,
made her lips hypnotically turn in a smile, her eyes soften, and sent
her hand out to Westerling in a trance-like gesture. For an instant it
rested on his arm with telling pressure, though she felt it burn with
shame at the point of contact.

"We must not think of that now," she said. "We must think of nothing
personal; of nothing but your work until your work is done!"

The prompting devil had not permitted a false note in her voice. Her
very pallor, in fixity of idea, served her purpose. Westerling drew a
deep breath that seemed to expand his whole being with greater
appreciation of her. Yet that harried hunger, the hunger of a beast, was
still in his glance.

"This is like you--like what I want you to be!" he said. "You are
right." He caught her hand, enclosing it entirely in his grip, and she
was sensible, in a kind of dazed horror, of the thrill of his strength.
"Nothing can stop us! Numbers will win! Hard fighting in the mercy of a
quick end!" he declared with his old rigidity of five against three
which was welcome to her. "Then," he added--"and then--"

"Then!" she repeated, averting her glance. "Then--" There the devil
ended the sentence and she withdrew her hand and felt the relief of one
escaping suffocation, to find that he had realized that anything further
during that interview would be banality and was rising to go.

"I don't feel decent!" she thought. "Society turned on Minna for a human
weakness--but I--I'm not a human being! I am one of the pawns of the
machine of war!"

Walking slowly with lowered head as she left the arbor, she almost ran
into Bouchard, who apologized with the single word "Pardon!" as he
lifted his cap in overdone courtesy, which his stolid brevity made the
more conspicuous.

"Miss Galland, you seem lost in abstraction," he said in sudden
loquacity. "I am almost on the point of accusing you of being a poet."

"Accusing!" she replied. "Then you must think that I would write bad
poetry."

"On the contrary, I should say excellent--using the sonnet form," he
returned.

"I might make a counter accusation, only that yours would be the epic
form," answered Marta. "For you, too, seem fond of rambling."

There was a veiled challenge in the hawk eyes, which she met with
commonplace politeness in hers, before he again lifted his cap and
proceeded on his way.

XXXVI

MARKING TI