“I couldn’t help it!” he replied.

“Until then!  You’ve been fine about everything to-day!”

“Until then!”

When Marta left the tower she knew only that she was weary with the mind-weariness, the body-weariness, the nerve-weariness of a spectator who has shared the emotion of every actor in a drama of death and finds the excitement that has kept her tense no longer a sustaining force.

As she went along the path, steps uncertain from sheer fatigue, her sensibilities livened again at the sight of a picture.  War, personal war, in the form of the giant Stransky, was knocking at the kitchen door.  His two-days-old beard was matted with dust and there were dried red spatters on his cheek.  War’s furnace flames seemed to have tanned him; war seemed to be breathing from his deep chest; his big nose was war’s promontory.  But the unexposed space of his forehead seemed singularly white when he took off his cap as Minna came in answer to his knock.  Her yielding lips were parted, her eyes were bright with inquiry and suspicion, her chin was firmly set.

“I came to see if you would let me kiss your hand again,” said Stransky, squinting through his brows wistfully.

“Would that do you any good?” Minna asked.

“A lot—­a big lot!” said Stransky.  “But if it is easier for you, why, you can give me another blow in the face.  I deserve it.  It would show that you weren’t quite indifferent; that you took some interest in me.”

“I see your nose has been broken once.  You don’t want it broken a second time.  I’m stronger than you think!” Minna retorted, and held out her hand carelessly as if it pleased her to humor him.

He was rather graceful, despite his size, as he touched his lips to her fingers.  Just as he raised his head a burst of cheering rose from the yard.

“So you’ve found that we have gone, you brilliant intellects!” he shouted, and glared at the wall of the house in the direction of the cheers.

“Quick!  You have no time to lose!” Minna warned him.

“Quick! quick!” cried Marta.

Stransky paid no attention to the urgings.  He had something more to say to Minna.

“I’m going to keep thinking of you and seeing your face—­the face of a good woman—­while I fight.  And when the war is over, may I come to call?” he asked.

His feet were so resolutely planted on the flags that apparently the only way to move them was to consent.

“Yes, yes!” said Minna.  “Now, hurry!”

“Say, but you make me happy!  Watch me poke it into the Grays for you!” he cried and bolted.

“It seems to me that he is the biggest, most ridiculous man I ever saw!” said Minna, as she watched him out of sight.  “I’m tired, just tired to death, aren’t you?” she added to Marta.

“Exactly!” agreed Marta.  “I feel as if I had worked my way through hell to heaven and heaven was the chance to sleep.”