“We are nearer to it than we have ever been in our time,” Lanstron replied.

The hat still shaded Feller’s face, his stoop was unchanged, but the branch in his hand shook.

“Honest?” he exclaimed.  “Oh, the chance of it! the chance of it!”

“Gustave!” Lanstron’s voice, still low, came in a gust of sympathy, and the pocket which concealed his hand gave a nervous twitch as if it held something alive and distinct from his own being.  “The trial wears on you!  You feel you must break out?”

“No, I’m game—­game, I tell you!” Still Feller spoke to the branch, which was steady now in a firm hand.  “No, I don’t grow weary of the garden and the isolation as long as there is hope.  But being deaf, always deaf, and yet hearing everything!  Always stooped, even when the bugles are sounding to the artillery garrison—­that is somewhat tiresome!”

“The idea of being deaf was yours, you know, Gustave,” said Lanstron.

“Yes, and the right plan.  It was fun at first going through the streets and hearing people say, ‘He’s deaf as a stone!’ and having everybody work their lips at me while I pretended to study them in a dumb effort to understand.  Actors have two hours of it an evening, and an occasional change of parts, but I act one part all the time.  I get as taciturn as a clam.  If war doesn’t come pretty soon I shall be ready for a monastery of perpetual silence.”

“Confound it, Gustave!” exclaimed Lanstron.  “It’s inhuman, old boy!  You shan’t stay another day!” Discretion to the winds, he sprang to his feet.

An impulse of the same sort overwhelmed Feller.  His hand let go of the branch.  The brim of the hat shot up, revealing a face that was not old, but in mercurial quickness of expressive, uncontrollable emotion was young, handsomely and attractively young in its frame of prematurely white hair.  The stoop was wholly gone.  He was tall now, his eyes sparkling with wild, happy lights and the soles of the heavy workman’s shoes unconsciously drawn together in a military stance.  Lanstron’s twitching hand flew from his pocket and with the other found Feller’s hand in a strong, warm, double grip.  For a second’s silence they remained thus.  Feller was the first to recover himself and utter a warning.

“Miss Galland—­Minna—­some one might be looking.”

He drew away abruptly, his face becoming suddenly old, his stoop returning, and began to study the branch as before.  Lanstron dropped back to his seat and gazed at the brown roofs of the town.  Thus they might continue their conversation as guest and gardener.

“I didn’t think you’d stick it out, but you wanted to try—­you chose,” said Lanstron.  “Come—­this afternoon—­now!”

“This is best for me—­this to the end of the chapter!” Feller replied doggedly.  “Because you say you didn’t think I’d stick it out—­ah, how well you know me.  Lanny!—­is the one reason that I should.”