"The Browns may sing 'God with us,' but He seems to have been with the Grays," Westerling answered. "Our whole movement was perfectly screened by the heavy weather." "But they know--they know every detail that you have told me!" ran her mocking, scarifying thought. "And this will be the most terrible attack of all?" she asked faintly. "Yes, such a concentration of men and guns as never were driven against any position--an irresistible force," he said. "Irresistible!" he repeated with a heavy emphasis. "But if the Browns did know where you were going to attack?" she asked absently and still more faintly. "The sacrifice of lives then would be all the greater?" "Yes, we should have to pay a higher price, but still we should be irresistible--irresistible!" he answered. Ghastly faces were staring at her, their lips moving in death to excoriate her. It was not too late to tell him the truth; not too late to stop the attack. Her head had sunk; she trembled and swayed and a kind of moan escaped her. She seemed utterly frail and so distraught that Westerling, in an impulse of protection, laid his hands on her relaxed shoulders. She could feel the pressure of each finger growing firmer in its power, while a certain eloquence possessed him in defiance of his apprehensions. "Our cause is at stake to-night," he declared, "yours and mine! We must win, you and I! It is our destiny!" "You and I!" repeated Marta. "Why you and I?" It seemed very strange to be thinking of any two persons when hundreds of thousands were awaiting the signal for the death prepared by him. He mistook the character of her thought in the obsession of his egoism. "What do lives mean?" he cried with a sudden desperation, his grip of her shoulders tightening. "It is the law of nature for man to fight. Unless he fights he goes to seed. One trouble with our army is that it was soft from the want of war. It is the law of nature for the fittest to survive! Other sons will be born to take the place of those who die to-night. There will be all the more room for those who live. Victory will create new opportunities. What is a million out of the billions on the face of the earth? Those who lead alone count--those who dwell in the atmosphere of the peaks, as we do!" The pressure of his strong hands in the unconscious emphasis of his passion became painful; but she did not protest or try to draw away, thinking of his hold in no personal sense but as a part of his self-revelation. "All--all is at stake there!" he continued, staring toward the range. "It's the Rubicon! I have put my career on to-night's cast! Victory means that the world will be at our feet--honor, position, power greater than that of any other two human beings! Do you realize what that means--the honor and the power that will be ours? I shall have directed the greatest army the world has ever known to victory!"