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. He gulped down a glassful of the wine; he ate with great mouthfuls in the ravenous call of healthy, exhausted tissues, while the maid stood by to cut more bread. "When it comes to eating after fighting--" He looked up when the first pangs of hunger were assuaged. Enormous, broad-shouldered, physical, his cheeks flushed with the wine, his eyes opened wide and brilliant with the fire that was in his nature--eyes that spoke the red business of anarchy and war. "Say, but you're pretty!" Springing up, he caught her hand and made to kiss her in the brashness of impulse. Minna struck him a stinging blow in the face. He received it as a mastiff would receive a bite from a pup, and she stood her ground, her eyes challenging his fearlessly. "So you are like that!" he said thoughtfully. "It was a good one, and you meant it, too." "Decidedly!" she answered. "There's more where that came from!" "As I was telling the Grays this afternoon! Good for you!" He sat down again composedly, while she glared at him. "I'm still hungry. I've had wine enough; but would you cut me another slice of bread?" She cut another slice and he covered it generously with jam. Then little Clarissa Eileen entered and pressed against her mother's skirts, subjecting Stransky to childhood's scrutiny. He waved a finger at her and grinned and drew his eyes together in a squint at the bridge of his nose, making a funny face that brought a laugh. "Your child?" Stransky asked Minna. "Yes." "Where's her father? Away fighting?" "I don't know where he is!" "Oh!" he mused. "Was that blow for him at the same time as for me?" he pursued thoughtfully. "Yes, for all of your kind." "M-m-m!" came from between his lips as he rose. "Would you mind holding out your hand?" he asked with a gentleness singularly out of keeping with his rough aspect. "Why?" she demanded. "I've never studied any books of etiquette of polite society, and I am a poor sort at making speeches, anyhow. But I want to kiss a good woman's hand by way of apology. I never kissed one in my life, but I'm getting a lot of new experiences to-day. Will you?" She held out her hand at arm's length and flushed slightly as he pressed his lips to it. "You certainly do cut thick slices of bread," he said, smiling. "And you certainly are pretty," he added, passing out of the door as jauntily as if he were ready for another fight and just in time to see the colonel of the regiment come around the house. He stood at the salute, half proudly, half defiantly, but in nowise humbly. "Well, Major Dellarme!" was the colonel's greeting of the company commander. "Major?" exclaimed Dellarme.