“The victory that I was thinking of last night was not the taking of Bordir.  It was finer than any victory in war.  It was selfish—­not for army and country, but born of a human weakness triumphant; a human weakness of which my career had robbed me,” he continued.  “It gave me a joy that even the occupation of the Browns’ capital could not give.  I had come as an invader and I had won your confidence.”

“In a cause!” she interrupted hurriedly, wildly, to stop him from going further, only to find that her intonation was such that it was drawing him on.

“That fatality seemed to be working itself out to the soldier so much older than yourself in renewed youth, in another form of ambition.  I hoped that there was more than the cause that led you to trust me.  I hoped—­”

Was he testing her?  Was he playing a part of his own to make certain that she was not playing one?  She looked up swiftly for answer.  There was no gainsaying what she saw in his eyes.  It was beating into hers with the power of an overwhelming masculine passion and a maturity of intellect as his egoism admitted a comrade to its throne.  Such is ever the way of the man in the forties when the clock strikes for him.  But who could know better the craft of courtship than one of Westerling’s experience?  He was fighting for victory; to gratify a desire.

“I did not expect this—­I—­” The words escaped tumultuously and chokingly.

She heard all the voices in chorus:  “Look out!  Look out!” And then the voice of Feller alone, insinuating, with a sinister mischievousness:  “What more could you ask?  Now that you have him, hold him!  For God and country—­for our dear Brown land!”

Hold a man who was making love to her by the tricks of the courtesan!  But what kind of love?  He was bending so close to her that she felt his breath on her cheek burning hot, and she was sickeningly conscious that he was looking her over in that point-by-point manner which she had felt across the tea-table at the hotel.  This horrible thing in his glance she had sometimes seen in strangers on her travels, and it had made her think that she was wise to carry a little revolver.  She wanted to strike him.

“Confess!  Confess!” called all her own self-respect.  “Make an end to your abasement!”

“Confession, after the Browns have given up Bordir!  Confession that makes Lanny, not Westerling, your dupe!” came the reply, which might have been telegraphed into her mind from the high, white forehead of Partow bending over his maps.  “Confession, betraying the cause of the right against the wrong; the three to the conquering five!  No!  You are in the things.  You may not retreat now.”

For a few seconds only the duel of argument thundered in her temples—­seconds in which her lips were parted and quivering and her eyes dilated with an agitation which the man at her side could interpret as he pleased.  A prompting devil—­a devil roused by that thing in his eyes—­urging a finesse in double-dealing which only devils understand, made her lips hypnotically turn in a smile, her eyes soften, and sent her hand out to Westerling in a trance-like gesture.  For an instant it rested on his arm with telling pressure, though she felt it burn with shame at the point of contact.