“I must actually know in order to be convincing,” she said.  “Now that of the main line.”

He did not include in the description of Engadir any reference to the Browns’ plan of a crushing counter-attack.  But as she was repeating this, her calm tone broke into an outcry of horror, as the nature of what he was inadvertently concealing flashed into her mind.  She was seeing another picture of imagination, with all the hideous detail of realism drawn from her week’s experiences.

“That column of Grays will go forward cheering with victory, led on, tricked on—­and then they will find themselves in a shambles.  No going forward, no going back through the cross-fire!  Is that it?”

“Yes, something like that, though not exactly a cross-fire—­not unless the enemy has poorer generals than we think.”

“But that will be the object and the effect—­wholesale slaughter?”

“Yes!” assented Lanstron honestly.

“And a woman whose greatest happiness and pride was in teaching the righteousness and the beauty of peace to children—­her lie will send them to death!” she moaned.  “I shall be a party to murder!”

“No more than Westerling!  No more than any general!  No—­” But he paused in his argument.  Conviction must come to her from within, not from without.  He stood graven and wordless, while she was tortured in the hell of her mind’s creation.

She was hearing the cry in the night of the Gray soldier who had fallen from the dirigible in the first day’s fighting; the agonized groans of the men under the wall of the terrace when the hand-grenades spattered human flesh as if it were jelly.  But there was Dellarme smiling; there was Hugo Mallin saying that he would fight for his own home; there was Stransky, who had thrown the hand-grenade, bringing in an exhausted old man on his back from under fire; there was Feller as he rallied Dellarme’s men; and—­and there was Lanny waiting at the other end of the wire—­and a burglar should not take her home.

“Men must have the courage of their convictions!” Hugo had said.  Hers were all for peace.  But there was not peace.  There could not be peace until the war demon had had his fill of killing and one side had to cry for mercy.  Which side should that be?  That was the only question.

“It will the sooner end fighting, won’t it, Lanny?” she asked in a small, tense voice.

“Yes.”

“And the only real end that means real peace is to prove that the weak can hold back the strong from their threshold?”

“Yes.”

Even now Westerling might be on the veranda, perhaps waiting for news that would enable him to crush the weak; to prove that the law of five pounds of human flesh against three, and five bayonets against three, is the law of civilization.

“Yes, yes, yes!” The constriction was gone from her throat; there was a drum-beat in her soul.  “Depend on me, Lanny!” It was Feller’s favorite phrase spoken by the one who was to take his place.  “Yes, I’m ready to make any sacrifice now.  For what am I?  What is one woman compared to such a purpose?  I don’t care what is said of me or what becomes of me if we can win!  Good-by, Lanny, till I call you up again!  And God with us!”