“Now!” exclaimed Marta narrowly.  “It was you, Lanny, who recommended Feller to us as a gardener, competent though deaf!” With literal brevity she told how she had proved him to be a man of most sensitive hearing.  “I didn’t let him know that he was discovered.  I felt too much pity for him to do that.  You brought him here—­you, Lanny, you are the one to explain.”

“True, he is not deaf!” Lanstron replied.

“You knew he was not deaf, while we wrote our messages to him and I have been learning the deaf-and-dumb alphabet!  It was pretty fun, wasn’t it?”

“Not fun—­no, Marta!” he parried.

“He is a spy?” she asked.

“Yes, a spy.  You can put things in a bright light, Marta!” He found words coming with difficulty in face of the pain and disillusion of her set look.

“Using some broken man as a pawn; setting him as a spy in the garden where you have been the welcome friend!” she exclaimed.  “A spy on what—­on my mother, on Minna, on me, on the flowers, as a part of this monstrous game of trickery and lies that you are playing?”

There was no trace of anger in her tone.  It was that of one mortally hurt.  Anger would have been easier to bear than the measuring, penetrating wonder that found him guilty of such a horrible part.  Those eyes would have confused Partow himself with the steady, welling intensity of their gaze.  She did not see how his left hand was twitching and how he stilled its movement by pressing it against the bench.

“You will take Feller with you when you go!” she said, rising.

Lanstron dropped his head in a kind of shaking throb of his whole body and raised a face white with appeal.

“Marta!” He was speaking to a profile, very sensitive and yet like ivory.  “I’ve no excuse for such an abuse of hospitality except the obesssion of a loathsome work that some man must do and I was set to do.  My God, Marta!  I cease to be natural and human.  I am a machine.  I keep thinking, what if war comes and some error of mine let the enemy know where to strike the blow of victory; or if there were information I might have gained and failed to gain that would have given us the victory—­if, because I had not done my part, thousands of lives of our soldiers were sacrificed needlessly!”

At that she turned on him quickly, her face softening.

“You do think of that—­the lives?”

“Yes, why shouldn’t I?”

“Of those on your side!” she exclaimed, turning away.

“Yes, of those first,” he replied.  “And, Marta, I did not tell you why Feller was here because he did not want me to, and I was curious to see if he had sustained power enough to keep you from discovering his simulation.  I did not think he would remain.  I thought that in a week he would tire of the part.  But now you must have the whole story.  You will listen?”

“I should not be fair if I did not, should I?” she replied, with a weary shadow of a smile.