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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.
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.
With all the vividness of her impressions, a partisan for the moment of him and Dellarme, she sketched Feller's part with the automatic. As he listened, Lanstron's spirit was twenty again, with the fever that Feller's "let's set things going!" could start rollicking in his veins. What did the thousandth chance matter? Only a wool-gatherer would ever have had any faith in it. Victory for Gustave!
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.
"Our house Westerling's headquarters!" she repeated. With a start that brought her up erect, alert, challenging, her lashes flickering, she recalled that Westerling had said at parting that he should see her if war came. This corroborated Lanstron's information. One side wanted a spy in the garden; the other a general in the house. Was she expected to make a choice? He had ceased to be Lanny.
In her ears were the haunting calmness and contained force of Lanstron's voice over the telephone. She was pleased to think that she had not lost her temper in her talk with the staff-officer. No, she had not flared once in indignation. It was as if she had absorbed some of Lanny's own self-control. Lanny would approve of her in that scene with an officer of the Grays.
"I am glad of that, Marta. I am glad you went and sorry that I opposed your going, because, Marta, whatever happens one should go regularly about what he considers his duty," said Mrs. Galland. "They have been as considerate as they could, evidently by Colonel Lanstron's orders," she proceeded, nodding toward the industrious engineers.
She noted Marta's customary quickening interest at mention of Lanstron's name. It had become the talisman of a hope whose fulfilment was always being deferred. "How different Lanny and Westerling are!" Marta exclaimed, the picture of the two men rising before her vision.
He was thinking aloud, a habit of his, in Lanstron's company, when an idea requiring gestation came to him. "My boy, it is not fatal if we lose the apron of Engadir. The defences behind it are very strong." "No, not fatal," Lanstron agreed. "But it's very important." "And Westerling will think it fatal. Yes, I understand his character.
For Lanstron's hand was quivering in Partow's grasp, while his face was that of a man stunned. "But Goerwitz what will he say?" he gasped. "Goerwitz goes to a division in reserve." "And the army! The government! What will they say at such such a jump for a colonel?" "The government leaves all to me from the day war begins.
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