which set the hand hidden in the pocket of his
blouse quivering. Why care if she were hurt? Why not think about the
hundreds of thousands of others who were wounded. Why not care for that
poor fellow whose ghastly wound kept staring at her as he wrote "Kill
me!" on the wagon body?

"It's the fashion to be wounded," she said, eyebrows lifted and lashes
lowered, with a nervous smile. "I played Florence Nightingale, the
natural woman's part, I believe. We should never protest; only nurse the
victims of war. After helping to send men to death I went under fire
myself, and--and that helped."

She could be kind to Feller but not to Lanstron. He was not a child. He
was Lanny, who, as she thought of him now, did nothing except by
calculation.

"Yes, that would help," he agreed, wincing as from a knife thrust.

Her old taunt: sending men to death and taking no risk himself! She saw
that he winced; she realized that she had stayed words that were about
to come in a flood. Then she seemed to see him through new lenses. He
appeared drawn and pale and old, as if he, too, had become ashes;
anything but the conqueror. Her feelings grew contradictory. Why all
this fencing? How weak, how silly! She had much to say to him--a last
appeal to make. Her throat held a dry lump. She was marshalling her
thoughts to begin when the brittle silence was broken by a rumbling of
voices, a stirring of feet, and a cheer.

"Lanstron! Lanstron! Hurrah for Lanstron!"

The soldiers in the garden did not bother with any "Your Excellency, the
chief of staff" formula when word had been passed of his presence. Marta
looked around to see their tempestuous enthusiasm as they tossed their
caps in the air and sent up their spontaneous tribute from the depths of
their lungs. Conqueror and hero to the living, but the dead could not
speak, whispered some fiend in her heart.

Lanstron uncovered to the demonstration impulsively, when the
conventional military acknowledgment would have been a salute. He always
looked more like the real Lanny to her with his forehead bare. It
completed the ensemble of his sensitive features. She saw that he was
blinking almost boyishly at the compliment and noted the little
deprecatory shake of his head, as much as to say that they were making a
mistake.

"Thank you!" he called, and the cheeriness of his voice, she thought,
expressed his real self; the delight of victory and the glowing
anticipation of further victories.

"Th