a given point.

He was conscious of a thrill; the thrill that always presaged victory
for him. He realized her evident distress; he guessed that terrible
pictures were moving before her vision, and he changed the subject.

"I know how revolting it must have been to have seen those soldiers
wantonly smashing your chandelier and gloating over their mischief," he
said. "Really, the Captain was to blame for letting his men get out of
hand. He seems not to have been a competent man. We can train and train
an officer, but when war comes--well, no amount of training will supply
a certain quality that must be inborn--the quality of command."

"Such as Dellarme had!" she exclaimed absently, under her breath.

She had forgotten her part and Westerling's presence. The given point of
her gaze was exactly where Dellarme lay when he died. She was
unconsciously smiling in the way that he had smiled. But to Westerling
it seemed that she was smiling at space. He was puzzled; his perception
piqued.

"Who was Dellarme?" he was bound to ask.

"The officer in command of the company of infantry posted behind the
sand-bags in the yard--he was killed!" she answered, turning her face
toward Westerling without the smile, singularly expressionless.

"Yes, he must have had the quality from the defence he made," agreed
Westerling, in the hearty tribute of a taxable soldier to a capable
soldier. So very well had that one small position been held that every
detail was graven on the mind of a chief of staff who was supposed to
leave details to his brigade commanders. It was he himself who had
ordered the final charge after the brigade commander had advised
delaying another attack until the redoubt could be hammered to pieces
by heavy guns brought up from the rear. "But he had to go!" Westerling
exclaimed doggedly; for he could not resist this tribute, in turn, to
his own success in making an example for timid brigade commanders in the
future by driving in more reserves until the enemy yielded.

"Yes!" she agreed without any change in the set face and moody eyes.

"You saw something of the defence?"

"Yes!" Marta replied in a way that aroused his imagination.

This, he recalled, had always been her gift. The slow-drawn monosyllable
was pregnant with revelations which his knowing mind could readily
supply. She had been in the midst of the fury of the most tenacious
fighting within a small space that the war had yet to chronicle. She had
bee