He was conscious of a thrill; the thrill that always presaged victory for him.  He realized her evident distress; he guessed that terrible pictures were moving before her vision, and he changed the subject.

“I know how revolting it must have been to have seen those soldiers wantonly smashing your chandelier and gloating over their mischief,” he said.  “Really, the Captain was to blame for letting his men get out of hand.  He seems not to have been a competent man.  We can train and train an officer, but when war comes—­well, no amount of training will supply a certain quality that must be inborn—­the quality of command.”

“Such as Dellarme had!” she exclaimed absently, under her breath.

She had forgotten her part and Westerling’s presence.  The given point of her gaze was exactly where Dellarme lay when he died.  She was unconsciously smiling in the way that he had smiled.  But to Westerling it seemed that she was smiling at space.  He was puzzled; his perception piqued.

“Who was Dellarme?” he was bound to ask.

“The officer in command of the company of infantry posted behind the sand-bags in the yard—­he was killed!” she answered, turning her face toward Westerling without the smile, singularly expressionless.

“Yes, he must have had the quality from the defence he made,” agreed Westerling, in the hearty tribute of a taxable soldier to a capable soldier.  So very well had that one small position been held that every detail was graven on the mind of a chief of staff who was supposed to leave details to his brigade commanders.  It was he himself who had ordered the final charge after the brigade commander had advised delaying another attack until the redoubt could be hammered to pieces by heavy guns brought up from the rear.  “But he had to go!” Westerling exclaimed doggedly; for he could not resist this tribute, in turn, to his own success in making an example for timid brigade commanders in the future by driving in more reserves until the enemy yielded.

“Yes!” she agreed without any change in the set face and moody eyes.

“You saw something of the defence?”

“Yes!” Marta replied in a way that aroused his imagination.

This, he recalled, had always been her gift.  The slow-drawn monosyllable was pregnant with revelations which his knowing mind could readily supply.  She had been in the midst of the fury of the most tenacious fighting within a small space that the war had yet to chronicle.  She had been an intimate of the splendid desperation of the Browns; known their thoughts and feelings.  What a multitude of impressions were stored in her sensitive mind, impressions which, for the moment, seemed to benumb her!  How she could make them speak from her eyes and quiver from her very finger-tips when she chose!  He would yet hear her vivid account of all that she had seen.  It would be informatory—­a reflection of the spirit of the Browns.  Her quietness itself was compelling in its latent strength, and strength was the thing he most admired.  More and more questions winged themselves into his thoughts, while his next one served the purpose of passing the time until Hugo came.