The lantern was in the corner at hand.  Only yesterday, in want of occupation, as she thought, she had cleaned the chimney and trimmed the wick.  It seemed as if Lanny’s fingers were lighting it now; as if he were leading the way as he had on her first visit to the telephone.  After her hastening steps had carried her along the tunnel to the telephone, she set down the lantern and pressed the spring that opened the panel door.  Another moment and she would be embarked on her great adventure in the finality of action.  That little ear-piece became a spectre of conscience.  She drew back convulsively and her hands flew to her face; she was a rocking shadow in the thin, reddish light of the lantern.

Conscious mind had torn off the mask from subconscious mind, revealing the true nature of the change that war had wrought in her.  She who had resented Feller’s part—­what a part she had been playing!  Every word, every shade of expression, every telling pause of abstraction after Westerling confessed that he had made war for his own ends had been subtly prompted by a purpose whose actuality terrified her.

Her hypocrisy, she realized, was as black as the wall of darkness beyond the lantern’s gleam.  All her pictures became a whirling involution of extravaganza and all the speeches of the characters of the scenes a kind of wail.  Then this demoralization passed, as a nightmare passes, with Westerling’s boast again in her ears.  She was seeing Hugo Mallin; hearing him announce his principles in sight of the spot where Dellarme had died: 

“I love my country....  But I know that other men love theirs....  Men should be brave for their convictions....  The Browns are fighting for their homes....  They are fighting, as I should want to fight, against murder and burglary....  I will fight with my face to the white posts, but not with my back to them.”

She was seeing the faces of her children; she was hearing them repeat: 

“But I shall not let a burglar drive me from my house.  If an enemy tries to take my land I shall appeal to his sense of justice and reason with him; but if he then persists I shall fight for my home.”

When war’s principles, enacted by men, were based on sinister trickery called strategy and tactics, should not women, using such weapons as they had, also fight for their homes?  Marta’s hands swept down from her eyes; she was on fire with resolution.

Forty miles away a bell in Lanstron’s bedroom and at his desk rang simultaneously.  At the time he and Partow were seated facing each other across a map on the table of the room where they worked together.  No persuasion of the young vice-chief, no edict of the doctors, could make the old chief take exercise or shorten his hours.

“I know.  I know myself!” he said.  “I know my duty.  And you are learning, my boy, learning!”

Every day the flabby cheeks grew pastier and the pouches under the eyebrows heavier.  But there was no dimming of the eagle flashes of the eyes, no weakening of the will.  Last night Lanstron had turned as white as chalk when Partow staggered on rising from the table, the veins on his temples knotted blue whip-cords.  Yet after a few hours’ sleep he reappeared with firm step, fresh for the fray.