No doubt now!  No more suspense!  Labor and sacrifice rewarded!  Fervent thanks to the Almighty were mingled with whistled snatches of wedding marches and popular songs.  An aide taking a message to the wire preferred leaping over a chair to going around it.  A subaltern and a colonel danced together.  Victory, victory, victory out of the burr of automatics, the pounding of artillery, the popping roar of rifles!  Victory out of the mire of trenches after brain-aching strain!  Victory for you and for me and for sweethearts and wives and children!  Aren’t we all Browns, orderly and captain, boyish lieutenant and gray-haired general?  A taciturn martinet of a major hugged a telegrapher to whom he had never spoken a single unofficial word.  Hadn’t the telegraphers, those silent men who were the tongue of the army, received the good news and passed it on?  Some officers who could be spared from duty went to their quarters, where they dropped like falling logs on their beds.  To them, after their spell of rejoicing, victory meant sleep for the first time in weeks without forked lightnings of apprehension stabbing their sub-consciousness.

Fellowship was in the victory, the fellowship which, developed under Partow, who believed that Napoleons and Colossi and gods in the car and all such gentlemen belonged to an archaic farce-comedy, had grown under Lanstron.  “The staff reports,” began the messages that awakened a world, retiring with the idea that the Browns were grimly holding the defensive, to the news that three millions had outgeneralled and defeated five.

In the inner room, whose opening door gave glimpses of Lanstron and the division chiefs, a magic of secret council which the juniors could not quite understand had wrought the wonder.  Lanstron had not forgotten the dead.  He could see them; he could see everything that happened.  Had not Partow said to him:  “Don’t just read reports.  Visualize men and events.  Be the artillery, be the infantry, be the wounded—­live and think in their places.  In this way only can you really know your work!”

His elation when he saw his plans going right was that of the instrument of Partow’s training and Marta’s service.  He pressed the hands of the men around him; his voice caught in his gratitude and his breaths were very short at times, like those of a spent, happy runner at the goal.  Feeding on victory and growing greedy of more, his division chiefs were discussing how to press the war till the Grays sued for peace; and he was silent in the midst of their talk, which was interrupted by the ringing of the tunnel telephone.  When he came out of his bedroom, Lanstron’s distress was so evident that those who were seated arose and the others drew near in inquiry and sympathy.  It seemed to them that the chief of staff, the head of the machine, who had left the room had returned an individual.

“The connection was broken while we were speaking!” he said blankly.  “That means it must have been cut by the enemy—­that the enemy knows of its existence!”