tion whose success or failure
will save or wreck his career. The physical desire of movement, the
conflict with something in his own mind, drove him out of doors.

"I want to blow my lungs in the fresh air! Call me if I am needed. I
shall be in the garden," he told his aide; and he thought that his voice
sounded calm and natural, as became Jove in a crisis that unnerved
lesser men. "Though I fancy it is the other chief of staff who will have
the work to do this evening, eh?" he added, forcing one of the smiles
which had been the magnetic servant of his personal force in his rise to
power.

"Yes, Your Excellency," said the aide.

Westerling was rather pleased with the fact that he could still smile;
pleased with the loyalty of this young officer when, day by day, the
rest of the staff had grown colder and more mechanical in the attitude
that completed his isolation. Walking vigorously along the path toward
the tower, the exercise of his muscles, the feel of the cool, moist air
on his face, brought back some of the buoyancy of spirit that he craved.
A woman's figure, with a cape thrown over the shoulders and the head
bare, loomed out of the mist.

"I couldn't stay in--not to-night," Marta said, as Westerling drew near.
"I had to see. It's only a quarter of an hour now, isn't it?"

"The Browns may sing 'God with us,' but He seems to have been with the
Grays," Westerling answered. "Our whole movement was perfectly screened
by the heavy weather."

"But they know--they know every detail that you have told me!" ran her
mocking, scarifying thought. "And this will be the most terrible attack
of all?" she asked faintly.

"Yes, such a concentration of men and guns as never were driven against
any position--an irresistible force," he said. "Irresistible!" he
repeated with a heavy emphasis.

"But if the Browns did know where you were going to attack?" she asked
absently and still more faintly. "The sacrifice of lives then would be
all the greater?"

"Yes, we should have to pay a higher price, but still we should be
irresistible--irresistible!" he answered.

Ghastly faces were staring at her, their lips moving in death to
excoriate her. It was not too late to tell him the truth; not too late
to stop the attack. Her head had sunk; she trembled and swayed and a
kind of moan escaped her. She seemed utterly frail and so distraught
that Westerling, in an impulse of protection, laid his hands on her
relaxed shoulders. She coul