“Ten years, isn’t it?” she exclaimed, putting a genuine quality of personal interest into the words as she gave his hand a quick, firm shake.  Then, with the informality of old acquaintances who had parted only yesterday, she indicated a place on the sofa for him, while she seated herself on the other side of the tea-table.  “The terrace there in the foreground,” she said with conforming gestures of location, “the church steeple over the town, the upward sweep of the mountains, and there the plain melting into the horizon.  And, let me see, you took two lumps, if I remember?”

He would have known the hand that poised over the sugar bowl though he had not seen the face; a brownish hand, not long-fingered, not narrow for its length—­a compact, deft, firm little hand.

“None now,” he said.

“Do you find it fattening?” she asked.

He recognized the mischievous sparkle of the eyes, the quizzical turn of the lips, which was her asset in keeping any question from being personal.  Nevertheless, he flushed slightly.

“A change of taste,” he averred.

“Since you’ve become such a great man?” she hazarded.  “Is that too strong?” This referred to the tea.

“No, just right!” he nodded.

He was studying her with the polite, veiled scrutiny of a man of the world.  A materialist, he would look a woman over as he would a soldier when he had been a major-general making an inspection.  She was slim, supple; he liked slim, supple women.  Her eyes, though none the less luminous, and her lips, though none the less flexible, did not seem quite as out of proportion with the rest of her face as formerly, now that it had taken on the contour of maturity, which was noticeable also in the lines of her figure.  Yes, she was twenty-seven, with the vivacity of seventeen retained, though she were on the edge of being an old maid according to the conventional notions.  Necks and shoulders that happened to be at his side at dinner, he had found, when they were really beautiful, were not averse to his glance of appreciative and discriminating admiration of physical charm.  But he saw her shrug slightly and caught a spark from her eyes that made him vaguely conscious of an offence to her sensibilities, and he was wholly conscious that the suggestion, bringing his faculties up sharply, had the pleasure of a novel sensation.

“How fast you have gone ahead!” she said.  “That little prophecy of mine did come true.  You are chief of Staff!”

After a smile of satisfaction he corrected her.

“Not quite; vice-chief—­the right-hand man of His Excellency.  I am a buffer between him and the heads of divisions.  This has led to the erroneous assumption which I cannot too forcibly deny—­”

He was proceeding with the phraseology habitual whenever men or women, to flatter him, had intimated that they realized that he was the actual head of the army.  His Excellency, with the prestige of a career, must be kept soporifically enjoying the forms of authority.  To arouse his jealousy might curtail Westerling’s actual power.