“Another position taken.  Our advance continues,” was the only news that Westerling gave to the army, his people, and the world, which forgot its sports and murders and divorce cases in following the progress of the first great European war for two generations.  He made no mention of the costs; his casualty lists were secret.  The Gray hosts were sweeping forward as a slow, irresistible tide; this by Partow’s own admission.  He announced the loss of a position as promptly as the Grays its taking.  He published a daily list of casualties so meagre in contrast to their own that the Grays thought it false; he made known the names of the killed and wounded to their relatives.  Yet the seeming candor of his press bureau included no straw of information of military value to the enemy.

Westerling never went to tea at the Gallands’ with the other officers, for it was part of his cultivation of greatness to keep aloof from his subordinates.  His meetings with Marta happened casually when he went out into the garden.  Only once had he made any reference to the “And then” of their interview in the arbor.

“I am winning battles for you!” he had exclaimed with that thing in his eyes which she loathed.

To her it was equivalent to saying that she had tricked him into sending men to be killed in order to please her.  She despised herself for the way he confided in her; yet she had to go on keeping his confidence, returning a tender glance with one that held out hope.  She learned not to shudder when he spoke of a loss of “only ten thousand.”  In order to rally herself when she grew faint-hearted to her task, she learned to picture the lines of his face hard-set with five-against-three brutality, while in comfort he ordered multitudes to death, and, in contrast, to recall the smile of Dellarme, who asked his soldiers to undergo no risk that he would not share.  And after every success he would remark that he was so much nearer Engadir, that position of the main line of defence whose weakness she had revealed.

“Your Engadir!” he came to say.  “Then we shall again profit by your information; that is, unless they have fortified since you received it.”

“They haven’t.  They had already fortified!” she thought.  She was always seeing the mockery of his words in the light of her own knowledge and her own part, which never quite escaped her consciousness.  One chamber of her mind was acting for him; a second chamber was perfectly aware that the other was acting.

“One position more—­the Twin Boulder Redoubt, it is called,” he announced at last.  “We shall not press hard in front.  We shall drive in masses on either side and storm the flanks.”

This she was telephoning to Lanstron a few minutes later and having, in return, all the news of the Browns.  The sheer fascination of knowing what both sides were doing exerted its spell in keeping her to her part.

“They’ve lost four hundred thousand men now, Lanny,” she said.