She was almost past him before he realized her presence, which he acknowledged by a startled movement and a step forward as he took off his hat.  She paused.  His eyes were glowing like coals under a blower as he looked at her and again at the batteries, seeming to include her with the guns in the spell of his fervid abstraction.  He was unconscious that he had ever been anything but a soldier.  His throat was athirst for words and his words craved a listening ear for all the pictures of the machinery of war in motion that crowded his imagination.  To him the demon was a fair, beckoning god in cloth of gold—­a god of hope and fortune.

“Frontier closed last night to prevent intelligence about our preparations leaking out—­Lanny’s plan all alive—­the guns coming,” he went on, his shoulders stiffening, his chin drawing in, his features resolute and beaming with the ardor of youth in action—­“troops moving here and there to their places—­engineers preparing the defences—­automatics at critical points with the infantry—­field-wires laid—­field-telephones set up—­the wireless spitting—­the caissons full—­planes and dirigibles ready—­search-lights in position”

There the torrent of his broken sentences was checked A shadow passed in front of him.  He came out of his trance of imageries of activities, so vividly clear to his military mind, to realize that Marta was abruptly leaving.

“Miss Galland!” he called urgently.  “Firing may commence at any minute.  You must not go into town!”

“But I must!” she declared, speaking over her shoulder while she paused.  It was clear that no warning would prevail against her determined mood.

“Then I shall go with you!” he said, starting toward her with a light step, in keeping with the gallantry of a man even younger than his years.  He spoke in a tone of protective masculine authority, as an officer might to a woman of whom he was fond when he saw her exposing herself to danger.  He would escort her; he would see that no harm befell her.  The impulse was spontaneous in an illusion free of the gardener’s part.  But he saw her lips tighten and a frown gather.

“It is not necessary, thank you!” she answered, more coldly than she had ever spoken to him.  This had a magically quick effect on his attitude.

“I beg pardon!  I forgot!” he explained in his old man’s voice, his head sinking, his shoulders drooping in the humility of a servant who recognizes that he has been properly rebuked for presumption.  “Not a gunner any more—­I’m a spy!” he thought, as he shuffled off without looking toward the batteries again, though the music of wheels and hoofs was now close by.  “I must turn my back on the guns, for they tempt me.  And I must win her consent before I shall have even the dignity of a spy—­and I will win it!” he added, brightening.  “La, la, la!  Trust me!”

Marta had a glimpse, as she turned away, of an appealingly pathetic figure bent as under a wound to his spirits, which gave her a sense of personal cruelty in the midst of a wave of pity and regret.