"You speak as if you thought you were going to lose!"
"Not while many of our soldiers are alive, if they continue to show the spirit that they have shown so far; not unless two men can crush one man in the automatic-gun-recoil age. But La Tir is in a tangent and already in the Grays' possession, while we act on the defensive. So I should hardly be flying over your garden again."
"But there's the telephone, Lanny, and here we are talking over it this very minute!" she expostulated.
"You must remove it," he said. "If the Grays should discover it they might form a suspicion that would put you in an unpleasant position."
The telephone had become almost a familiar institution in her thoughts. Its secret had something of the fascination for her of magic.
"Nonsense!" she exclaimed. "I am going to be very lonely. I want to learn how Feller is doing—I want to chat with you. So I decide not to let it be taken out. And, you see, I have the tactical situation, as you soldiers call it, all in my favor. The work of removal must be done at my end of the line. You're quite helpless to enforce your wishes. And, Lanny, if I ring the bell you'll answer, won't you?"
"I couldn't help it!" he replied.
"Until then! You've been fine about everything to-day!"
"Until then!"
When Marta left the tower she knew only that she was weary with the mind-weariness, the body-weariness, the nerve-weariness of a spectator who has shared the emotion of every actor in a drama of death and finds the excitement that has kept her tense no longer a sustaining force.