"Then, if you don't think of it in connection with pouring tea, let me tell you what I think of when I sit on this veranda. I think of you as hostess. You refuse to play the part!" he exclaimed with that persistence, softened a little, perhaps, yet suggestive of the quality characterized by the firm jaw and still eyes, which won his point at staff councils. Again he was conscious of one of her sweeping glances of appraisal, with just a glint of admiration and even approval tucked away in the recesses of her smile. "Suppose we compromise," she suggested thoughtfully, with the gravity of one making a great concession. "Suppose you do the heavy work, and pour, and I drop the sugar in the cups." But Westerling always used a half concession as a lever to gain a full concession. "I'd really better do it all--act out the host and the conqueror!" he declared. "One can't compromise principles." "Oh! Why?" She was distinctly interested, leaning nearer to him and playing a tattoo with one set of fingers on the back of the other hand. "Anything except your doing all the honors leaves me in the same invidious position," he answered. "It compounds my felony. It shows that you do think that we failed by our conduct to show respect for your property. It leaves me feeling that you think that I do not regard this as your veranda, your garden, your home, sacred by more than the laws of war--by an old friendship!" He made his appeal finely, as he well knew how to do. A certain magnetic eloquence that went well with his handsome face and sturdy bearing had been his most successful asset in making him chief of staff. The tattoo of her fingers died down while she listened to his final, serious reasons about a subject that became peculiarly significant; and her brows lifted, her eyes opened in the surprise of one who gets a sudden new angle of light. "You put it very well. In that case--" she said, and his glance and hers dropped, his to the capable hand on the handle of the teapot, hers into the cup. "With the honors of war and officers permitted to retain their side-arms?" she asked. "Yes; oh, yes!" he answered happily. She smiled her acknowledgment with just that self-respect of capitulation which flatters the victor with the thought that he has overcome no mean opponent--the highest form of compliment known to the guild of courtiers.