To her it was equivalent to saying that she had tricked him into sending men to be killed in order to please her. She despised herself for the way he confided in her; yet she had to go on keeping his confidence, returning a tender glance with one that held out hope. She learned not to shudder when he spoke of a loss of "only ten thousand." In order to rally herself when she grew faint-hearted to her task, she learned to picture the lines of his face hard-set with five-against-three brutality, while in comfort he ordered multitudes to death, and, in contrast, to recall the smile of Dellarme, who asked his soldiers to undergo no risk that he would not share. And after every success he would remark that he was so much nearer Engadir, that position of the main line of defence whose weakness she had revealed.
"Your Engadir!" he came to say. "Then we shall again profit by your information; that is, unless they have fortified since you received it."
"They haven't. They had already fortified!" she thought. She was always seeing the mockery of his words in the light of her own knowledge and her own part, which never quite escaped her consciousness. One chamber of her mind was acting for him; a second chamber was perfectly aware that the other was acting.
"One position more—the Twin Boulder Redoubt, it is called," he announced at last. "We shall not press hard in front. We shall drive in masses on either side and storm the flanks."
This she was telephoning to Lanstron a few minutes later and having, in return, all the news of the Browns. The sheer fascination of knowing what both sides were doing exerted its spell in keeping her to her part.
"They've lost four hundred thousand men now, Lanny," she said.
"And we only a hundred thousand. We're whittling them down," answered Lanstron.
"Whittling them down! What a ghastly expression!" she gasped. "You are as bad as Westerling and I am worse than either of you! I—I announced the four hundred thousand as if they were a score—a score in a game in our favor. I am helping, Lanny? All my sacrifice isn't for nothing?" she asked for the hundredth time.
"Immeasurably. You have saved us many lives!" he replied.
"And cost them many?" she asked.