From the line of defence, that included the first terrace of the Galland grounds as the angle of a redoubt, not a shot, not a sound; silence on the part of officers and men as profound as Mrs. Galland’s slumber, while one of the Browns’ search-lights, like some great witch’s slow-turning eye in a narrow radius, covered the lower terraces and the road.

Marta gave intermittent glances at the garden; the glances of a guardian.  She happened to be looking in that direction when figures sprang across the road, crouching, running with the short, quick steps of no body movement accompanying that of the legs.  The search-light caught them in merciless silhouette and the automatic and the rifles from behind the sand-bags on the first terrace let go.  Some of the figures dropped and lay in the road and she knew that she had seen men hit for the first time.  Others, she thought, got safely to the cover of the gutter on the garden side.  Of those on the road, some were still and some she saw were moving slowly back on their stomachs to safety.  Now the search-light laid its beam steadily on the road.  Again silence.  From the upper terrace came a great voice, like that of the guns, from a human throat: 

“Why didn’t we level those terraces?  They’ll creep up from one to the other!” It was Stransky.

In answer was another voice—­Dellarme’s.

“Perhaps there wasn’t time to do everything.  And if this position is taken before we are ready to go, it will not be from that side, but from the side of the town.”

“We’re making them pay for seeing our garden, but, anyhow, we won’t let them pick any flowers,” Stransky remarked pungently.

“If they get as far as the first terrace—­well, in case of a crisis, we have hand-grenades,” Dellarme added in explanation.  “But, God knows, I hope we shall not have to use them.”

After an interval, more figures made a rush across the road.  They, too, in Stransky’s words, paid a price for seeing the garden.  But the flashes from the rifles and the automatic provided a target for a Gray battery.  The blue spark that flies from an overhead trolley or a third rail, multiplied a hundredfold, broke in Marta’s face.  It was dazzling, blinding as a bolt of lightning a few feet distant, with the thunder crash at the same second, followed by the thrashing hum of bullets and fragments against the side of the house.

“I knew that this must come!” something within her said.  If she had not been prepared for it by the events of the last twelve hours she would have jumped to her feet with an exclamation of natural shock and horror.  As it was, she felt a convulsive, nervous thrill without rising from her seat.  A pause.  The next shell burst in line with the first, out by the linden-trees; a third above the veranda.

“We’ve got that range, all right!” thought the Gray battery commander, who had judged the distance by the staff map.  This was all he wanted to know for the present.  He would let loose at the proper time to support the infantry attack, when there were enough driblets across the road to make a charge.  The driblets kept on coming, and, one by one, the number of dead on the road was augmented.