ficers
into silence and ramrod salutes. Marta noted the deference of their
glances as they covertly looked him over. On what meat had our Caesar fed
that he had grown so great? This was the man who had pleaded with her to
allow a spy in her garden; for whom she herself had turned spy.
To-morrow his name would be in the head-lines of every newspaper in the
world. His portrait would become as familiar to the eyes of the world as
that of the best-advertised of kings. He was the conqueror whose
commonplace sayings would be the sparks of genius because the gamble of
war had gone his way. He had grown so great by sending shells into the
stricken eddy at the foot of the garden and driving punishing columns
against the retreating masses in the defile. The god in the car and of
the machine, with his quiet manner, his intellectual features; this
one-time friend, more subtle in pursuit of the same ambitions than the
blind egoism of Westerling! These officers and men and all officers and
men and herself were pawns of his plans and his will. Yes, even herself.
Had he stopped with the repulse of the enemy? No. Would he stop now? No.
Her disillusion was complete. She knew the truth; she felt it as steel
stiffening against him and against every softer impulse of her own.

"I wanted a glimpse of the front as well as the rear," Lanstron
remarked in explanation of his presence to the general of brigade as he
passed on toward Marta, who was thinking that she, at least, was not in
awe of him; she, at least, saw clearly and truly his part.

"Marta! Marta!"

Lanstron's voice was tremulous, as if he were in awe of her, while he
drank in the fact that she was there before him at arms' length, safe,
alive. She did not offer her hand in greeting. She was incapable of any
movement, such was her emotion; and he, too, was held in a spell, as the
reality of her, after all that had passed, filled his eyes. He waited
for her to speak, but she was silent.

"Marta--that bandage! You have been hurt?" he exclaimed.

Unlike Feller, he had not been so obsessed with a purpose as to be blind
to externals. Her hostile mood was quick to recall that no smallest
detail of anything under his sight ever escaped him. This was his kind
of strength--the strength that had wrecked Westerling as a fine,
intellectual process. He could act, too. In the tone of the question,
"You've been hurt?" without tragic emphasis, was a twitching, throbbing
undercurrent of horror,