“The army is yours, Westerling,” concluded the premier.  “I admire your stolidity of purpose.  You have my confidence.  I shall wait and hold the situation at home the best I can.  We go into the hall of fame or into the gutter together, you and I!”

For a while after he had hung up the receiver Westerling’s head drooped, his muscles relaxed, giving mind and body a release from tension.  But his spine was as stiff as ever as he left the closet, and he was even smiling to give the impression that the news from the capital was favorable.  When the telegraphers’ jaws had dropped as the reports of casualties came in, when discouragement lengthened the faces around him and whispered in the very breezes from the fields of the dead, he had automatically maintained his confident mien.  Any sign of weakening would be ruinous in its effect on his subordinates.  The citadel of his egoism must remain unassailable.  He must be the optimist, the front of Jove, for all.

When he called his chiefs of divisions it was hardly for a staff council.  Stunned by the losses and repulses, loyally industrious, their opinions unasked, they listened to his whirlwind of orders without comment—­all except Turcas.

“If they are apprised of our plan and are able to concentrate more artillery than our guns can silence, the losses will be demoralizing,” he observed.

Westerling threw up his head, frowning down the objection.

“Suppose they amount to half the forces that we send in!” he exclaimed.  “Isn’t the position, which means the pass and the range, worth it?”

“Yes, if we both take and hold it; not if we fail,” replied Turcas, quite unaffected by Westerling’s manner.

“Failure is not in my lexicon!” Westerling shot back.  “For great gains there must be great risks.”

“We prepare for the movement, Your Excellency,” answered Turcas.

It was a steel harness of his own will that Westerling wore, without admitting that it galled him, and he laid it off only in Marta’s presence.  With her, his growing sense of isolation had the relief of companionship.  She became a kind of mirror of his egoism and ambitions.  He liked to have her think of him as a great man unruffled among weaker men.  In the quiet and seclusion of the garden, involuntarily as one who has no confidant speaks to himself, reserving fortitude for his part before the staff, while she, under the spell of her purpose, silently, with serene and wistfully listening eyes, played hers, he outlined how the final and telling blow was to be struck.

“We must and we shall win!” he kept repeating.

* * * * *

Through a rubber disk held to his ear in the closet of his bedroom a voice, tremulous with nervous fatigue, was giving Lanstron news that all his aircraft and cavalry and spies could not have gained; news worth more than a score of regiments; news fresh from the lips of the chief of staff of the enemy.  The attack was to be made at the right of Engadir, its centre breaking from the redoubt manned by Fracasse’s men.