"Miss Galland, it was you--your influence I was counting on to--" The captain turned to Marta in a final appeal. Mrs. Galland was watching her daughter's face intently. "We stay!" replied Marta, and the captain saw in the depths of her eyes, a cold blue-black, that further argument was useless. With a shrug of his shoulders he was turning to go when his lieutenant, hurrying up and pointing to the row of lindens at the edge of the estate, exclaimed: "If we only had those trees out of the way! They cut the line of our fire! They form cover and protection for the enemy." "The orders are against it," replied the captain. "Lanstron may be a great soldier, but--" declared the lieutenant petulantly. "Cut the lindens if it will help the Browns!" called Mrs. Galland. "Cut the lindens, mother! Is everything to be destroyed--everything to satisfy the appetite of savagery?" exclaimed Marta. Then, in an abrupt change of mood, inexplicable to the captain and even to herself, she added: "My mother says to cut the lindens. And you will tell us when to go into the house?" Marta asked the captain. "Yes. There is no danger yet--none until we see the 53d falling back." What mockery, what uncanny staginess for either her mother or herself to be so calm! Yet, what else were they to do? Were they to scream? Or fall into each other's arms and sob? Marta found a strange pleasure in looking at her garden before it was spattered with blood, as it had been in the last war. It had never seemed more beautiful. There was a sublimity in nature's obliviousness to the thrashing of the air with shells in a gentle breeze that fluttered the petals of the hydrangeas. The sight of Feller coming along the path of the second terrace brought in sudden vividness to her mind that question which must soon be decided: whether or not she would allow him to remain to carry out his plan. He still had the garden-shears in hand. He was walking with the slow and soft step which was in keeping with the serenity of his occupation. Pausing before the chrysanthemum bed, he touched his hat, and as he awaited her approach he lifted one of the largest blooms that was drooping from its weight on the slender stem. "They look well, don't you think?" he asked cautiously; and he was very cool, while his eyes had a singular limpidity, speaking better than any words the sadness of his story and the dependence of his hope of regeneration upon her. "Yes, quite the best they ever have," she replied, inclined to look away from him, conscious of her sensitiveness to his appeal, and yet still looking at him, while she marvelled at him, at herself, at everything. "Thank you," he said. "You don't know how much that means, how pleased I am."