rvous fatigue, was giving Lanstron news that all
his aircraft and cavalry and spies could not have gained; news worth
more than a score of regiments; news fresh from the lips of the chief of
staff of the enemy. The attack was to be made at the right of Engadir,
its centre breaking from the redoubt manned by Fracasse's men.

"Marta, you genius!" Lanstron cried. "You are the real general! You--"

"Not that, please!" she broke in. "I'm as foul and depraved as a dealer
in subtle poisons in the Middle Ages! Oh, the shame of it, while I look
into his eyes and feign admiration, feign everything which will draw out
his plans! I can never forget the sight of him as he told me how two or
three or four hundred thousand men were to be crowded into a ram, as he
called it--a ram of human flesh!--and guns enough in support, he said,
to tear any redoubts to pieces; guns enough to make their shells as
thick as the bullets from an automatic!"

"We'll meet ram with ram! We'll have some guns, too!" exclaimed
Lanstron. "We'll send as heavy a shell fire at their infantry as they
send into our redoubts."

"Yes; oh, yes!" she replied. "Westerling couldn't say it any better!
What difference is there between you? Each at his desk is saying: 'This
regiment will die here; that regiment will die there!' I bring you word
of one human ram going to destruction in order that you may send another
to destroy and be destroyed! And I'm worse than you. I am the go-between
in the conspiracy of universal murder, sleeping in a good bed every
night, in no danger--when I can sleep; but I can't. I go mad from
thinking of my part, keying myself up deliriously to each fresh deceit!"

With every sentence her voice broke and it seemed that she would not be
able to utter another. Yet she kept on in the alternation of taut,
pitiful monotone and dry, coughing sobs.

"How have I ever been able to go as far as I have? How did I get through
this last scene? When it seems as if I were about to collapse, something
supports me. When the thing grows too horrible and I am about to cry out
to Westerling that I am false, I hear his boast that he made the war as
a last step in his ambition. And there is Dellarme's smile rising before
me. He died so finely in defence of our garden! When my brain goes numb
and I can't think what to say, can't act, Feller appears, prompting with
ready word and facile change of expression, and I have my wits again. I
go on! I go on!"

A racking