thinking!" she murmured reflectively. "That's not
the thing now!" she added with sudden force. "Partow gave you the
positions?"

He described the Bordir position. She repeated the description after him
with a stoical matter-of-factness to make sure that she had it
correctly.

"I must actually know in order to be convincing," she said. "Now that of
the main line."

He did not include in the description of Engadir any reference to the
Browns' plan of a crushing counter-attack. But as she was repeating
this, her calm tone broke into an outcry of horror, as the nature of
what he was inadvertently concealing flashed into her mind. She was
seeing another picture of imagination, with all the hideous detail of
realism drawn from her week's experiences.

"That column of Grays will go forward cheering with victory, led on,
tricked on--and then they will find themselves in a shambles. No going
forward, no going back through the cross-fire! Is that it?"

"Yes, something like that, though not exactly a cross-fire--not unless
the enemy has poorer generals than we think."

"But that will be the object and the effect--wholesale slaughter?"

"Yes!" assented Lanstron honestly.

"And a woman whose greatest happiness and pride was in teaching the
righteousness and the beauty of peace to children--her lie will send
them to death!" she moaned. "I shall be a party to murder!"

"No more than Westerling! No more than any general! No--" But he paused
in his argument. Conviction must come to her from within, not from
without. He stood graven and wordless, while she was tortured in the
hell of her mind's creation.

She was hearing the cry in the night of the Gray soldier who had fallen
from the dirigible in the first day's fighting; the agonized groans of
the men under the wall of the terrace when the hand-grenades spattered
human flesh as if it were jelly. But there was Dellarme smiling; there
was Hugo Mallin saying that he would fight for his own home; there was
Stransky, who had thrown the hand-grenade, bringing in an exhausted old
man on his back from under fire; there was Feller as he rallied
Dellarme's men; and--and there was Lanny waiting at the other end of the
wire--and a burglar should not take her home.

"Men must have the courage of their convictions!" Hugo had said. Hers
were all for peace. But there was not peace. There could not be peace
until the war demon had had his fill of killing and one side had to cry
for mercy