n high places, he had become a colonel at thirty-two. People with fixed
ideas as to the appearance of a soldier said that he looked every inch
the commander. He was tall, strong-built, his deep, broad chest
suggesting powerful energy. Conscious of his abilities, it was not
without reason that he thought well of himself, in view of the order,
received that morning, which was to make this a farewell call.

He had found Mrs. Galland an agreeable reflection of an aristocratic
past. The daughter had what he defined vaguely as girlish piquancy. He
found it amusing to try to answer her unusual questions; he liked the
variety of her inventive mind, with its flashes of downright
matter-of-factness.

Ascending the steps with his firm, regular tread, he suggested poise and
confidence and, perhaps, vanity also in his fastidious dress. As Marta's
slight, immature figure came to the edge of the veranda, he wondered
what she would be like five years later, when she would be twenty-two
and a woman. It was unlikely that he would ever know, or that in a month
he would care to know. He would pass on; his rank would keep him from
returning to South La Tir, which was a colonel's billet except in time
of war.

Not until tea was served did he mention his new assignment; he was
going to the general staff at the capital. Mrs. Galland murmured her
congratulations in conventional fashion.

"Into the very holy of holies of the great war machine, isn't it?" Marta
asked.

"Yes--yes, exactly!" he replied.

Her chair was drawn back from the table. She leaned forward in a
favorite position of hers when she was intensely interested, with hands
clasped over her knee, which her mother always found aggravatingly
tomboyish. She had a mass of lustrous black hair and a mouth rather
large in repose, but capable of changing curves of emotion. Her large,
dark eyes, luminously deep under long lashes, if not the rest of her
face, had beauty. Her head was bent, the lashes forming a line with her
brow now, and her eyes had the still flame of wonder that they had when
she was looking all around a thing and through it to find what it meant.
Westerling knew by the signs that she was going to break out with one of
her visions, rather than one of her whimsical ideas. She was seeing the
Roman general, the baron, the first Galland, and the fat, pompous little
man, no less in the life than Hedworth Westerling. She had fused them
into one.

"Some day you will be chi