Nor did the officers observe a man of thirty-five, wearing the cords of the staff and a general’s stars, coming around the corner of the house.  Marta’s feverish, roving glance had noted him directly he was in sight.  His face seemed to be in keeping with the other faces, in the ardor of a hunt unfinished; hand in blouse pocket, his bearing a little too easy to be conventionally military—­the same Lanny.

She was dimly conscious of surprise not to find him changed, perhaps because he was unaccompanied by a retinue or any other symbol of his power.  He might have been coming to call on a Sunday afternoon.  In that first glimpse it was difficult to think of him as the commander of an army.  But that he was, she must not forget.  She was shaken and trembling; and a mist rose before her, so that she did not see him clearly when, with a gesture of relief, he saw her.

“Lanstron!” exclaimed an officer in the first explosive breath of amazement on recognizing him; then added:  “His Excellency, the chief of staff!”

But the one word, Lanstron, had been enough to thrill all the officers into silence and ramrod salutes.  Marta noted the deference of their glances as they covertly looked him over.  On what meat had our Caesar fed that he had grown so great?  This was the man who had pleaded with her to allow a spy in her garden; for whom she herself had turned spy.  To-morrow his name would be in the head-lines of every newspaper in the world.  His portrait would become as familiar to the eyes of the world as that of the best-advertised of kings.  He was the conqueror whose commonplace sayings would be the sparks of genius because the gamble of war had gone his way.  He had grown so great by sending shells into the stricken eddy at the foot of the garden and driving punishing columns against the retreating masses in the defile.  The god in the car and of the machine, with his quiet manner, his intellectual features; this one-time friend, more subtle in pursuit of the same ambitions than the blind egoism of Westerling!  These officers and men and all officers and men and herself were pawns of his plans and his will.  Yes, even herself.  Had he stopped with the repulse of the enemy?  No.  Would he stop now?  No.  Her disillusion was complete.  She knew the truth; she felt it as steel stiffening against him and against every softer impulse of her own.

“I wanted a glimpse of the front as well as the rear,” Lanstron remarked in explanation of his presence to the general of brigade as he passed on toward Marta, who was thinking that she, at least, was not in awe of him; she, at least, saw clearly and truly his part.

“Marta!  Marta!”

Lanstron’s voice was tremulous, as if he were in awe of her, while he drank in the fact that she was there before him at arms’ length, safe, alive.  She did not offer her hand in greeting.  She was incapable of any movement, such was her emotion; and he, too, was held in a spell, as the reality of her, after all that had passed, filled his eyes.  He waited for her to speak, but she was silent.