“It must be bandaged!  I have a handkerchief!” she begged.  “I’m not going to faint or anything like that!”

“Only bruised—­and it’s the left.  I am glad it was not the right,” he replied.  Westerling arrived and joined Marta in offers of assistance just as they heard the prolonged honk of an automobile demanding the right of way at top speed in the direction of the pass.

“Thank you, but they’re coming for me,” said Lanstron to Westerling as he glanced up the road.

Westerling was looking at the wreck.  Lanstron, who recognized him as an officer, though in mufti, kicked a bit of the torn cloth over some apparatus to hide it.  At this Westerling smiled faintly.  Then Lanstron saluted as officer to officer might salute across the white posts, giving his name and receiving in return Westeling’s.

They made a contrast, these two men, the colonel of the Grays, swart and sturdy, his physical vitality so evident, and the captain of the Browns, some seven or eight years the junior, bareheaded, in dishevelled fatigue uniform, his lips twitching, his slender body quivering with the pain that he could not control, while his rather bold forehead and delicate, sensitive features suggested a man of nerve and nerves who might have left experiments in a laboratory for an adventure in the air.  There was a kind of challenge in their glances; the challenge of an ancient feud of their peoples; of the professional rivalry of polite duellists.  Lanstron’s slight figure seemed to express the weaker number of the three million soldiers of the Browns; Westerling’s bulkier one, the four million five hundred thousand of the Grays.

“You had a narrow squeak and you made a very snappy recovery at the last second,” said Westerling, passing a compliment across the white posts.  Marta could literally see a white post there between the two.

“That’s in the line of duty for you and me, isn’t it?” Lanstron replied, his voice thick with pain as he forced a smile.

There was no pose in his fortitude.  He was evidently disgusted with himself over the whole business, and he turned to the group of three officers and a civilian who alighted from a big Brown army automobile as if he were prepared to have them say their worst.  They seemed between the impulse of reprimanding and embracing him.

“I hope that you are not surprised at the result,” said the oldest of the officers, a man of late middle age, rather affectionately and teasingly.  He wore a single order on his breast, a plain iron cross, and the insignia of his rank was that of a field-marshal.

“Not now.  I should be again, sir,” said Lanstron, looking full at the field-marshal in the appeal of one asking for another chance.  “I was wool-gathering.  My mind was off duty for a second and I got a lesson in self-control at the expense of the machine.  I treated it worse than it deserved, and it treated me better than I deserved.  But I shall not wool-gather next time.  I’ve got a reminder more urgent than a string tied around my finger.”