nvas of his painting, or the sculptor on
the fragments of his statue. Worse still, with no faith to give him
fortitude except the materialistic, he saw the altar of his god of
military efficiency in ruins. He who had not allowed the word retreat to
enter his lexicon now saw a rout. He had laughed at reserve armies in
last night's feverish defiance, at Turcas's advocacy of a slower and
surer method of attack. In those hours of smiting at a wall with his
fists and forehead, in denial of all the truth so clear to average
military logic, if he had only given a few conventional directions all
this disorder would have been avoided. His army could have fallen back
in orderly fashion to their own range. The machine out of order, he had
attempted no repair; he had allowed it to thrash itself to pieces.

The splinters of its debris--steel splinters--were lacerating his brain.
He had a sense that madness was coming and some instinct of
self-preservation made the whole scene grow misty, as he tried to
resolve it out of existence in the desire for some one object which was
not his guns and his men in demoralization. A bit of pink caught his
eye--the pink of a dress, a little girl's dress, down there at the edge
of the garden by the road, at the same moment that some guns of the
Browns, in a new position, opened on an inviting target. Over her head
was a crack and a blue tongue of smoke whipped out of nothing; while a
shower of shrapnel bullets made spurts of dust around her. She started
to run toward the terrace steps and another burst made her run in the
opposite direction, while she looked about in a paralysis of fear and
then threw herself on her face.

"My God! That little girl--there--there!" Westerling exclaimed
distractedly.

"Clarissa! Clarissa!" cried Marta, seeing the child for the first time.

She started precipitately to the rescue, but a hand on her arm arrested
her and she turned to see Hugo Mallin bound past her down the slope.
Still remaining on the premises under guard while Westerling had
neglected to dispose of the case, he had the run of the grounds that
morning while the staff was feverishly preparing for departure.

Marta watched him leaping from terrace to terrace. Before he had reached
Clarissa worse than shrapnel bursts happened. The spatter of the
fragments and bullets falling on either side of the road whipped the
edges of the struggling human jam inward. In the midst of this a
percussion shell struck