“That is all?” queried Westerling, again looking at Marta, this time covertly, while he played with a teaspoon.

Brooding uncertainty had flooded the sparkle out of her eyes.  She was statue-like in her stillness, her breaths impalpable in their softness.  But the points of her knuckles were ghostly, sharp spots on her tightly clenched hands.  All that Westerling could tell was that she was thinking, and thinking hard.  There was a space of silence broken only by the movement of the teaspoon.  Hugo was the first to speak.

“I believe in patriotism, sir.  That means love of country.  I love my country,” he said slowly.

A preachment of patriotism from this nonchalant private was a straw too much for Westerling’s patience.  He made a nervous gesture—­a distinctly nervous one as he dropped the teaspoon.  He would have an end of nonsense.

“You will answer questions!” he said.  “First, you dropped your rifle?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You refused to fight?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You know the penalty for this?”

Hugo inclined his head.  He was silent.

“Shot for treason—­and immediately!” Westerling went on, irritated at the man’s complaisance.  Then he bit his lip.  This was harsh talk before Marta.  He expected to hear her utter some sort of protest against such cruelty, and instead saw that her face remained calm and that there was nothing but wonder in her eyes.  She knew how to wait.

“Then, sir,” said Hugo, speaking, evidently, because he was expected to say something, “I suppose, of course, that I shall be shot.  But”—­he was smiling in the way that he would when he brought a “good one” to the head in the barracks—­“but it will not be necessary to do it more than once, will it?  To tell you the truth, I had not counted on being shot more than once.”

Westerling was like a man who had lunged a blow at an object and struck only air.

“I said that he was not a coward,” Marta remarked quietly.  There was nothing in her manner to imply that she was defending Hugo.  She seemed to be incidentally justifying a previous observation of her own.

A smile in face of death!  Westerling’s prayer was for countless masses of infantry who would smile in face of death and do his bidding.  He could not resist a soldier’s admiration, which, however, he would not permit to take the form of words.  The form which it took was a sharp thrust of his fist into the hollow of his hand.  He had, too, a sense of defeat which was uppermost as he spoke—­a defeat that he was bound to retrieve.

“You have a home, a father, and a mother?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“And perhaps a sweetheart?” Westerling proceeded.

Hugo unmistakably flushed.

“I don’t think sir, that official statistics require an answer to that question.  I”—­and again that confounded smile, as Westerling was beginning to regard it—­“I trust, sir, that I shall not have to be shot more than once if we do not bring any one not yet officially of my family into the affair.”