"It is for you and not for us to locate the leak; yes, for you!" he said. "That is all on the subject for the present," he added in a tone of mixed pity and contempt, which left Bouchard freed from the stare of his colleagues and in the miserable company of his humiliation.
All on the subject for the present! When it was taken up again his successor would be in charge. He, the indefatigable, the over-intense, with his mediæval partisan fervor, who loathed in secret machines like Turcas, was the first man of the staff to go for incompetency.
"And Engadir is the key-point," Westerling was saying.
"Yes," agreed Turcas.
"So we concentrate to break through there," Westerling continued, "while we engage the whole line fiercely enough to make the enemy uncertain where the crucial attack is to be made."
"But, general, if there is any place that is naturally strong, that—" Turcas began.
"The one place where they are confident that we won't attack!" Westerling interrupted. He resented the staff's professional respect for Turcas. After a silence and a survey of the faces around, he added with sententious effect: "And I was right about Bordir!"
To this argument there could be no answer. The one stroke of generalship by the Grays, who, otherwise, had succeeded alone through repeated mass attacks, had been Westerling's hypothesis that had gained Bordir in a single assault.
"Engadir it is, then!" said Turcas with the loyalty of the subordinate who makes a superior's conviction his own, the better to carry it out.
Hazily, Bouchard had heard the talk, while he was looking at Westerling and seeing him, not at the head of the council table, but in the arbor in eager appeal to Marta.