"Miss Galland!"
Blinking as she came out of the darkness into the bright light, with a lock of her dew-sprinkled dark hair free and brushing her flushed cheek, Marta saw the division chiefs of the Browns, after their start when Lanstron spoke her name, all stand at the salute, looking at her rather than at him. The reality in the flesh of the woman who had been a comrade in service, sacrificing her sensibilities for their cause, appealed to them as a true likeness of their conceptions of her. In their eyes she might read the finest thing that can pass from man's to woman's or from man's to man's. These were the strong men of her people who had driven the burglar from her house with the sword of justice. Their tribute had the steadfast loyalty of soldiers who were craving to do anything in the world that she might ask, whether to go on their knees to her or to kill dragons for her.
"I may come in?" she asked.
"Who if not you is entitled to the privilege of the staff council?" exclaimed the vice-chief.
The others did not propose to let him do all the honors. Each murmured words of welcome on his own account.
"We are here, thanks to you!"
"And, thanks to you, our flag will float over the Gray range!"
She must be tired, was their next thought. Four or five of them hurried to place a chair for her, the vice-chief winning over his rivals, more through the exercise of the rights of rank than by any superior alacrity.
"You are appointed actual chief of staff and a field-marshal!" said the vice-chief to Lanstron. "The premier says that every honor the nation can bestow is yours. The capital is mad. The crowds are crying: 'On to the Gray capital!' To-morrow is to be a public holiday and they are calling it Lanstron Day. The thing was so sudden that the speculators who depressed our securities in the world's markets have got their due—ruin! And we ought to get an indemnity that will pay the cost of the war."
Seated at one side, Marta could watch all that passed, herself unobserved. She noted a touch of color come to Lanstron's cheeks as he made a little shrug of protest.