Westerling was rather pleased with the fact that he could still smile; pleased with the loyalty of this young officer when, day by day, the rest of the staff had grown colder and more mechanical in the attitude that completed his isolation.  Walking vigorously along the path toward the tower, the exercise of his muscles, the feel of the cool, moist air on his face, brought back some of the buoyancy of spirit that he craved.  A woman’s figure, with a cape thrown over the shoulders and the head bare, loomed out of the mist.

“I couldn’t stay in—­not to-night,” Marta said, as Westerling drew near.  “I had to see.  It’s only a quarter of an hour now, isn’t it?”

“The Browns may sing ‘God with us,’ but He seems to have been with the Grays,” Westerling answered.  “Our whole movement was perfectly screened by the heavy weather.”

“But they know—­they know every detail that you have told me!” ran her mocking, scarifying thought.  “And this will be the most terrible attack of all?” she asked faintly.

“Yes, such a concentration of men and guns as never were driven against any position—­an irresistible force,” he said.  “Irresistible!” he repeated with a heavy emphasis.

“But if the Browns did know where you were going to attack?” she asked absently and still more faintly.  “The sacrifice of lives then would be all the greater?”

“Yes, we should have to pay a higher price, but still we should be irresistible—­irresistible!” he answered.

Ghastly faces were staring at her, their lips moving in death to excoriate her.  It was not too late to tell him the truth; not too late to stop the attack.  Her head had sunk; she trembled and swayed and a kind of moan escaped her.  She seemed utterly frail and so distraught that Westerling, in an impulse of protection, laid his hands on her relaxed shoulders.  She could feel the pressure of each finger growing firmer in its power, while a certain eloquence possessed him in defiance of his apprehensions.

“Our cause is at stake to-night,” he declared, “yours and mine!  We must win, you and I!  It is our destiny!”

“You and I!” repeated Marta.  “Why you and I?”

It seemed very strange to be thinking of any two persons when hundreds of thousands were awaiting the signal for the death prepared by him.  He mistook the character of her thought in the obsession of his egoism.

“What do lives mean?” he cried with a sudden desperation, his grip of her shoulders tightening.  “It is the law of nature for man to fight.  Unless he fights he goes to seed.  One trouble with our army is that it was soft from the want of war.  It is the law of nature for the fittest to survive!  Other sons will be born to take the place of those who die to-night.  There will be all the more room for those who live.  Victory will create new opportunities.  What is a million out of the billions on the face of the earth?  Those who lead alone count—­those who dwell