s, with the
mesmerism of movement and burning desire which calls the imagination of
youth to arms! The supreme moment of fury and splendid rush, which
becomes the recollection to the survivor to be told from the knee to
future generations in a way to make small boys love to play with
soldiers! These men knew nothing except that they had legs and that
ahead was a goal. Oaths and laughter were mingled in their souls; the
energy of a delirium sped their steps. They were so many human missiles
fired by an impulse, with too much initial velocity to stop at the
bottom of the valley as the colonel had directed. Lord, no! Let's have
the thing over with, bit in teeth! The common instinct of the living,
who neither saw nor thought of those who fell, swept them up the slope.
Every man who survived was the whole regiment in himself; its pride, its
gallantry, its inheritance in his keeping.

"Fiends of hell and angels of heaven! We're here and we did it alone!"
gasped the winded, ragged line that reached the crest.

"I thought they would!" said the brigade commander, who had watched the
charge through his glasses from an eminence. "But at what a cost! It was
lucky for them that it was only a rear-guard resistance. However, it
certainly thrills the imagination and it will be a good thing for Brown
prestige in Africa."

"Why?" Marta heard the officers around her asking after their
exclamations of amazement at the news that Lanstron was going in the
charge. "Why should the chief of staff risk his life in this fashion?"

Marta knew. All her taunts about sending others to death from his office
chair, uttered as the fugitive sarcasm of a mood, recurred in the
merciless hammer-beat of recollection. For a moment she was aghast,
speechless. Then the officers, occupied with the startling news, heard a
voice, wrenched from a dry throat in anguish, saying:

"The telephone! Try to reach him! Tell him he must not!"

"We can hardly say 'must not' to a chief of staff," said the general
automatically.

"Tell him I ask him not to! Try to reach him--try--you can try!"

"Yes, yes! Certainly!" exclaimed the general, turning to the telephone
operator.

He had seen now what the younger men had seen at a glance. They were
recalling Lanstron's relief at seeing her; how he had passed them by to
speak to her; the intensity of the two in their almost wordless meeting.
Her bloodless lips, the imploring passion in her eyes, her quivering
impatience to