"You, Marta, are our brightest hope of victory!"
"Yes?" The monosyllable was detached, dismal, labored. "A woman can be that!" she exclaimed in an uncertain tone, which grew into the distraction of clipped words and broken sentences. "A woman play-acting—a woman acting the most revolting hypocrisy—influences the issue between two nations! Her deceit deals in the lives of sons precious to fathers and mothers, the fate of frontiers, of institutions! Think of it! Think of machines costing countless millions—machines of flesh and blood, with their destinies shaped by one little bit of lying information! Think of the folly of any civilization that stakes its triumphs on such a gamble! Am I not right? Isn't it true? Isn't it?"
"Yes, yes, Marta! But—I—" If she were weakening it was not his place to try to strengthen her purpose.
"I was thinking, only thinking!" she murmured reflectively. "That's not the thing now!" she added with sudden force. "Partow gave you the positions?"
He described the Bordir position. She repeated the description after him with a stoical matter-of-factness to make sure that she had it correctly.
"I must actually know in order to be convincing," she said. "Now that of the main line."
He did not include in the description of Engadir any reference to the Browns' plan of a crushing counter-attack. But as she was repeating this, her calm tone broke into an outcry of horror, as the nature of what he was inadvertently concealing flashed into her mind. She was seeing another picture of imagination, with all the hideous detail of realism drawn from her week's experiences.
"That column of Grays will go forward cheering with victory, led on, tricked on—and then they will find themselves in a shambles. No going forward, no going back through the cross-fire! Is that it?"
"Yes, something like that, though not exactly a cross-fire—not unless the enemy has poorer generals than we think."
"But that will be the object and the effect—wholesale slaughter?"