o have come in from a hard ride.
Both were watching Marta, as if waiting for her to speak. She met
Westerling's look steadily, her eyes dark and still and in his the
reflection of the vague realization of more than he had guessed in her
relations with Hugo.

"Well," she breathed to Westerling, "the war goes on!"

"That's it! That's the voice!" exclaimed the subaltern in an explosion
of recognition.

A short, sharp laugh of irony broke from Bellini; the laugh of one
whose suspicions are confirmed in the mixture of the sublime and the
ridiculous. Marta looked around at the interruption, alert, on guard.

"You seem amused," she remarked curiously.

"No, but you must have been," replied Bellini hoarsely. "Early this
morning, not far from the castle, this young officer found in the crater
made by a ten-inch shell a wire that ran in a conduit underground. The
wire was intact. He tapped it. He heard a voice thanking some one for
her part in the victory, and it seems that the woman's voice that
answered is yours, Miss Galland. So, General Westerling, the leak in
information was over this wire from our staff into the Browns'
headquarters, as Bouchard believed and as I came to believe."

So long had Marta expected this moment of exposure that it brought no
shock. Her spirit had undergone many subtle rehearsals for the occasion.

"Yes, that is true," she heard herself saying, a little distantly, but
very quietly and naturally.

Westerling fell back as from a blow in the face. His breath came hard at
first, like one being strangled. Then it sank deep in his chest and his
eyes were bloodshot, as a bull's in his final effort against the
matador. He raised a quivering, clenched fist and took a step nearer
her.

But far from flinching, Marta seemed to be greeting the blow, as if she
admitted his right to strike. She was without any sign of triumph and
with every sign of relief. Lying was at an end. She could be truthful.

"Do you recall what I said in the reception-room at the hotel?" she
asked.

The question sent a flash into a hidden chamber of his mind. Now the
only thing he could remember of that interview was the one remark which
hitherto he had never included in his recollection of it.

"You said I could not win." He drew out the words painfully.

"And I pleaded with your selfishness--the only appeal to be made to
you," she continued, "to prevent war, which you could have done. When
you said that you brought on th