No member of the staff was more frequently present at Marta’s teas than Bouchard, who was developing his social instinct late in life by sitting in the background and allowing others to do the talking while he watched and listened.  In his hearing, Marta’s attitude toward the progress of the war was sympathetic but never interrogatory, while she shared attention with Clarissa Eileen, who was in danger of becoming spoiled by officers who had children of their own at home.  After the reports of killed and wounded, which came with such appalling regularity, it was a relief to hear of the day’s casualties among Clarissa’s dolls.  The chief of transportation and supply rode her on his shoulder; the chief of tactics played hide-and-seek with her; the chief engineer built her a doll house of stones with his own hands; and the chief medical officer was as concerned when she caught a cold as if the health of the army were at stake.

“We mustn’t get too set up over all this attention, Clarissa Eileen, my rival,” said Marta to the child.  “You are the only little girl and I am the only big girl within reach.  If there were lots of others it would be different.”

She had occasional glimpses of Hugo Mallin on his crutches, keeping in the vicinity of the shrubbery that screened the stable from the house.  How Marta longed to talk with him!  But he was always attended by a soldier, and under the rigorous discipline that held all her impulses subservient to her purpose she passed by him without a word lest she compromise her position.

Bouchard was losing flesh; his eyes were sinking deeper under a heavier frown.  His duty being to get information, he was gaining none.  His duty being to keep the Grays’ secrets, there was a leak somewhere in his own department.  He quizzed subordinates; he made abrupt transfers, to no avail.

Meanwhile, the Grays were taking the approaches to the main line of defence, which had been thought relatively immaterial but had been found shrewdly placed and their vulnerability overestimated.  The thunders of batteries hammering them became a routine of existence, like the passing of trains to one living near a railroad.  The guns went on while tea was being served; they ushered in dawn and darkness; they were going when sleep came to those whom they later awakened with a start.  Fights as desperate as the one around the house became features of this period, which was only a warming-up practice for the war demon before the orgy of the impending assault on the main line.

Marta began to realize the immensity of the chess-board and of the forces engaged in more than the bare statement of numbers and distances.  If a first attack on a position failed, the wires from the Galland house repeated their orders to concentrate more guns and attack again.  In the end the Browns always yielded, but grudgingly, calculatingly, never being taken by surprise.  The few of them who fell prisoners said, “God with us!  We shall win in the end!” and answered no questions.  Gradually the Gray army began to feel that it was battling with a mystery which was fighting under cover, falling back under cover—­a tenacious, watchful mystery that sent sprays of death into every finger of flesh that the Grays thrust forward in assault.