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Updated: June 11, 2025
He put his hat back on a head already bent, while the shoulders, after a pathetic shrug, drew together in the accustomed stoop. His slim fingers slipped under the largest chrysanthemum blossom, his attitude the same as when he had held it up for Marta's inspection before they heard the roar of the Gray squadron's motors.
A prod of the hypodermic from the major surgeon, and "On the operating-table in fifteen minutes" was the answer to Marta's question if the poor fellow would live.
If he did not, and tried to incarnate the idea of the time by making himself the supreme genius of war, he would fail, because ability was too nearly universal and the age too big for another Colossus. Through Marta's information every detail of Westerling's plan outlined itself to the trained minds of the Brown staff.
In his hearing, Marta's attitude toward the progress of the war was sympathetic but never interrogatory, while she shared attention with Clarissa Eileen, who was in danger of becoming spoiled by officers who had children of their own at home. After the reports of killed and wounded, which came with such appalling regularity, it was a relief to hear of the day's casualties among Clarissa's dolls.
Striking certain keys, certain chords responded. He could probe the depths of their minds, he thought, in a single evening. Then he passed on, unless it was in the interest of pleasure or of his career to linger. This meeting had left his curiosity baffled. He understood how Marta's vitality demanded action, which exerted itself in a feminine way for a feminine cause.
"We prepare for the movement, Your Excellency," answered Turcas. It was a steel harness of his own will that Westerling wore, without admitting that it galled him, and he laid it off only in Marta's presence. With her, his growing sense of isolation had the relief of companionship. She became a kind of mirror of his egoism and ambitions.
If anything could awaken Marta to action it ought to be war, which was a great match-maker forty years ago. The thought of a lover in danger had precipitated wavering hearts into engagements. Marta's mood was such that she received the hint openly and playfully to-day. "Oh, I don't despair!" she exclaimed, straightening her shoulders and drawing in her chin with a mock display of bravery.
There was a veiled challenge in the hawk eyes, which she met with commonplace politeness in hers, before he again lifted his cap and proceeded on his way. For the next two weeks Marta's rôle resolved itself into a kind of routine. Their cramped quarters became spacious to the three women in the intimacy of the common secret shared by them under the very nose of the staff.
All Marta's faculties and emotions were frozen in her stare of suspense at the breach. Her heart seemed straining with the effort of the living, who heard nothing, thought nothing, in the crux of their effort. War's own mesmerism had made her forget Feller and everything except the gamble, the turn of the card, while the gray figures kept stumbling on over their fallen.
He followed her into the house and dropped on a leather chair before a shining table in a room panelled with oak, wondering at her and at himself. No woman of Marta's world had ever spoken in that way to him. But it was good to sit down. Then a maid with a sad, winsome face and tender eyes brought him wine and bread and cold meat and jam.
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