The sight of Feller coming along the path of the second terrace brought in sudden vividness to her mind that question which must soon be decided:  whether or not she would allow him to remain to carry out his plan.  He still had the garden-shears in hand.  He was walking with the slow and soft step which was in keeping with the serenity of his occupation.  Pausing before the chrysanthemum bed, he touched his hat, and as he awaited her approach he lifted one of the largest blooms that was drooping from its weight on the slender stem.

“They look well, don’t you think?” he asked cautiously; and he was very cool, while his eyes had a singular limpidity, speaking better than any words the sadness of his story and the dependence of his hope of regeneration upon her.

“Yes, quite the best they ever have,” she replied, inclined to look away from him, conscious of her sensitiveness to his appeal, and yet still looking at him, while she marvelled at him, at herself, at everything.

“Thank you,” he said.  “You don’t know how much that means, how pleased I am.”

Now came the sweep of a rising roar from the sky with the command to attention of the rush of a fast express-train past a country railway station.  Two Gray dirigibles with their escort of aeroplanes—­in formation like that which Mrs. Galland and Feller had seen race along the frontier—­were bearing toward the pass over the pass road.  One glimpse of the squadron was as a match to Feller’s military passion.  He swept off his old straw hat and with it all of the gardener’s chrysalis.  Feller the artillerist gazed aloft in feverish excitement.

“Lanny has them guessing!  They’re bound to know his plans if it takes all the air craft in the shop!” he exclaimed.  “And what are we doing?  Yes, what are we doing?” he cried in alarm as his glance swept the sky in front of the squadron, already even with the terrace in its terrific speed.

The automatic and the riflemen in the tower banged away to no purpose, for the aerostatic officers of the Grays had been apprised of the danger in that direction.

“Minutes, seconds count!  Where are our high-angle guns?” Feller went on.  He was unconsciously gesticulating with all the fervor of hurrying a battery into place to cover an infantry retreat in a crisis.  “And they’re turning!  What’s the matter?  What are high-angle guns for, anyway, with such targets naked over our lines?  Ah-h!  Beautiful!”

The central sections of the envelope of the rear dirigible had been torn in shreds; it was buckling.  Clouds of blue shrapnel smoke broke around its gondola.  A number of field-guns joined forces with a battery of high-angle guns in a havoc that left a drifting derelict that had ceased to exist to Feller’s mind immediately it was out of action; for he saw that the remainder of the squadron had completed its loop and was pointing toward the plain.