"Yes!" she agreed without any change in the set face and moody eyes.
"You saw something of the defence?"
"Yes!" Marta replied in a way that aroused his imagination.
This, he recalled, had always been her gift. The slow-drawn monosyllable was pregnant with revelations which his knowing mind could readily supply. She had been in the midst of the fury of the most tenacious fighting within a small space that the war had yet to chronicle. She had been an intimate of the splendid desperation of the Browns; known their thoughts and feelings. What a multitude of impressions were stored in her sensitive mind, impressions which, for the moment, seemed to benumb her! How she could make them speak from her eyes and quiver from her very finger-tips when she chose! He would yet hear her vivid account of all that she had seen. It would be informatory—a reflection of the spirit of the Browns. Her quietness itself was compelling in its latent strength, and strength was the thing he most admired. More and more questions winged themselves into his thoughts, while his next one served the purpose of passing the time until Hugo came.
"There was a man out of uniform, in a gardener's garb, in charge of the automatic," he remarked. "It was so puzzling that I heard of it. You see, there is no limit to what a chief of staff may know."
"Yes, our gardener," she replied.
"Your gardener! Why, how was that? Wasn't he in the reserves if he were a Brown? Wasn't he called to the colors at the outbreak of the war?"
In spite of himself the questions were somewhat sharp. They seemed to take Marta by surprise, which, however, was evanescent.
"I wonder!" she said, as interested as Westerling in the suggestion. "Something a soldier would think of immediately and a woman wouldn't. I know that we lost our gardener."
That was all. She did not attempt any further explanation or enlarge on the subject, but let it go as an inquiry unexplained in the course of conversation.