Westerling ran through the papers that Turcas had prepared for him. If Turcas had written the order for the wounded, Westerling knew that it was properly done. Having cleared his desk into the hands of his executive clerk, he looked at the clock. It had barely turned four. He picked up the final staff report of observations on the late Balkan campaign, just printed in book form, glanced at it and laid it aside. Already he knew the few lessons afforded by this war "done on the cheap," with limited equipment and over bad roads. No dirigibles had been used and few planes. It was no criterion, except in the effect of the fire of the new pattern guns, for the conflict of vast masses of highly trained men against vast masses of highly trained men, with rapid transportation over good roads, complete equipment, thorough organization, backed by generous resources, in the cataclysm of two great European powers. Rather idly, now, he drew a pad toward him and, taking up a pencil, made the figures seventeen and twenty-seven. Then he made the figures thirty-two and forty-two. He blackened them with repeated tracings as he mused. This done, he put seventeen under twenty-seven and thirty-two under forty-two. He made the subtraction and studied the two tens. A swing door opened softly and his executive clerk reappeared with a soft tread, unheard by Westerling engaged in mechanically blackening the tens. The clerk, pausing as he waited for a signal of recognition, observed the process wonderingly. To be absently making figures on a pad was not characteristic of the vice-chief of staff. When he was absorbed his habit was to tap the desk edge with the blunt end of his pencil. "Some papers for your signature, sir," said the clerk as he slipped them on the blotter in front of Westerling. "And the 132d--no order about that, sir?" he asked. "None. It remains!" Westerling replied. The clerk went out impressed. His chief taking to sums of subtraction and totally preoccupied! The 132d to remain! He, too, had a question-mark in his secret mind. Westerling proceeded with his mathematics. Having heavily shaded the tens, he essayed a sum in division. He found that ten went into seventy just seven times. "One-seventh the allotted span of life!" he mused. "Take off fifteen years for youth and fifteen after fifty-five--nobody counts after that, though I mean to--and you have ten into forty, which is one fourth. That is a good deal. But it's more to a woman than to a man--yes, a lot more to a woman than to a man!"