"You cannot make omelets without breaking eggs," Westerling answered with suave finality.
"I wonder if the baron ever said that!" Marta recollected that it was a favorite expression of the fat, pompous little man. "It sounds like the baron, at all events."
Westerling did not mind being likened to the baron. It was a corroboration of her prophecy. The baron must have been a great leader of men in his time.
"The aeroplane will take its place as an auxiliary," he went on, his mind still running on the theme of her prophecy, which the meeting with Lanstron had quickened. "But war will, as ever, be won by the bayonet that takes and holds a position. We shall have no miracle victories, no—"
There he broke off. He did not accompany Mrs. Galland and Marta back to the house, but made his adieus at the garden-gate.
"I'm sure that I shall never marry a soldier!" Marta burst out as she and her mother were ascending the steps.
"No?" exclaimed Mrs. Galland with the rising inflection of a placid scepticism that would not be drawn into an argument. Another of Marta's explosions! It was not yet time to think of marriage for her. If it had been Mrs. Galland would not have been so hospitable to Colonel Westerling. She would hardly have been, even if the colonel had been younger, say, of Captain Lanstron's age. Though an officer was an officer, whether of the Browns or the Grays, and, perforce, a gentleman to be received with the politeness of a common caste, every beat of her heart was loyal to her race. Her daughter's hand was not for any Gray. Young Lanstron certainly must be of the Thorbourg Lanstrons, she mused. A most excellent family! Of course, Marta would marry an officer. It was the natural destiny of a Galland woman. Yet she was sometimes worried about Marta's whimsies. She, too, could wonder what Marta would be like in five years.