The captain flushed in embarrassment.

“I—­I can’t speak too strongly,” he declared when he had regained his composure.  “Though everything seems safe here now, it may not be in an hour.  You must go, all of you.  This house will be in an inferno as soon as the 53d falls back, and I can’t possibly get your mother to appreciate the fact, Miss Galland.”

“But I said that I did appreciate it and that the Gallands have been in infernos before—­perhaps not as bad as the one that is coming—­but, then, the Gallands must keep abreast of the times,” replied Mrs. Galland.  “I have asked Minna and she prefers to remain.  I am glad of that.  I am glad now that we kept her, Marta.  She is as loyal as my old maid and the butler and the cook were to your grandmother in the last war.  Ah, the Gallands had many servants then!”

“This isn’t like the old war.  This place will be shelled, enfiladed!  And you two—­” the captain protested desperately.

“I became a Galland when I married,” said Mrs. Galland, “and the Galland women have always remained with their property in time of war.  Naturally, I shall remain!”

“Miss Galland, it was you—­your influence I was counting on to—­” The captain turned to Marta in a final appeal.

Mrs. Galland was watching her daughter’s face intently.

“We stay!” replied Marta, and the captain saw in the depths of her eyes, a cold blue-black, that further argument was useless.

With a shrug of his shoulders he was turning to go when his lieutenant, hurrying up and pointing to the row of lindens at the edge of the estate, exclaimed: 

“If we only had those trees out of the way!  They cut the line of our fire!  They form cover and protection for the enemy.”

“The orders are against it,” replied the captain.

“Lanstron may be a great soldier, but—­” declared the lieutenant petulantly.

“Cut the lindens if it will help the Browns!” called Mrs. Galland.

“Cut the lindens, mother!  Is everything to be destroyed—­everything to satisfy the appetite of savagery?” exclaimed Marta.  Then, in an abrupt change of mood, inexplicable to the captain and even to herself, she added:  “My mother says to cut the lindens.  And you will tell us when to go into the house?” Marta asked the captain.

“Yes.  There is no danger yet—­none until we see the 53d falling back.”

What mockery, what uncanny staginess for either her mother or herself to be so calm!  Yet, what else were they to do?  Were they to scream?  Or fall into each other’s arms and sob?  Marta found a strange pleasure in looking at her garden before it was spattered with blood, as it had been in the last war.  It had never seemed more beautiful.  There was a sublimity in nature’s obliviousness to the thrashing of the air with shells in a gentle breeze that fluttered the petals of the hydrangeas.