"Our house Westerling's headquarters!" she repeated. With a start that brought her up erect, alert, challenging, her lashes flickering, she recalled that Westerling had said at parting that he should see her if war came. This corroborated Lanstron's information. One side wanted a spy in the garden; the other a general in the house. Was she expected to make a choice? He had ceased to be Lanny. He personified war. Westerling personified war. "I suppose you have spies under his very nose--in his very staff offices?" she asked. "And probably he has in ours," said Lanstron, "though we do our best to prevent it." "What a pretty example of trust among civilized nations!" she exclaimed. "And you say that Westerling, who commands the killing on his side, will be in no danger?" "Naturally not. As you know, a chief of staff must be at the wire head where all information centres, free of interruption or confusion or any possibility of broken lines of communication with his corps and divisions." "Then Partow will not be in any danger?" "For the same reasons, no." "How comfortable! In perfect safety themselves, they will order other men to death!" "Marta, you are unjust!" exclaimed Lanstron, for he revered Partow as disciple reveres master. "Partow has the iron cross!"--the prized iron cross given to both officers and men of the Browns for exceptional courage in action and for that alone. "He won it leading a second charge with a bullet in his arm, after he had lost thirty per cent, of his regiment. The second charge succeeded." "Yes, I understand," she went on a little wildly. "And perhaps the colonel on the other side, who fought just as bravely and had even heavier losses, did not get the bronze cross of the Grays because he failed. Yes, I understand that bravery is a requisite of the military cult. You must take some risk or you will not cause enough slaughter to win either iron or bronze crosses. And, Lanny, are you a person of such distinction in the business of killing that you also will be out of danger?" She had forgotten about the telephone; she had forgotten the picture of dare-devil nerve he made when he rose from the wreck of his plane. If his work were to make war, her work was against war--the mission of her life as she saw it in the intense, passionate moments when some new absurdity of its processes appeared to her. She was ready to seize any argument his talk offered to combat the things for which he stood. She did not see, as her eyes poured her hot indignation into his, that his maimed hand was twitching or how he bit his lips and flushed before he replied: "Each one goes where he is sent, link by link, down from the chief of staff. Only in this way can you have that solidarity, that harmonious efficiency which means victory." "An autocracy, a tyranny over the lives of all the adult males in countries that boast of the ballot and self-governing institutions!" she put in.