The dignity of a staff council could not restrain Marta. Her emotion must have action. She sprang to his side and seized his hand, her exultation mixed with penitence over the why she had wronged him and Partow. Their self-contained purpose had been the same as hers and they had worked with a soldier's fortitude, while she had worked with whims and impulses. She bent over him with gratitude and praise and a plea for forgiveness in her eyes, submerging the thing which he sought in them. He flushed boyishly in happy embarrassment, incapable of words for an instant; and silently the staff looked on.
"And I agree with Partow," Lanstron went on, "that we cannot take the range. The Grays still have numbers equal to ours. It is they, now, who will be singing 'God with us!' with their backs against the wall. With Partow's goes my own appeal to the army and the nation; and I shall keep faith with Partow, with Miss Galland, and with my own ideas, if the government orders the army to advance, by resigning as chief of staff—my work finished."
Westerling and his aide and valet, inquiring their way as strangers, found the new staff headquarters of the Grays established in an army building, where Bouchard had been assigned to trivial duties, back of the Gray range. As their former chief entered a room in the disorder of maps and packing-cases, the staff-officers rose from their work to stand at salute like stone images, in respect to a field-marshal's rank. There was no word of greeting but a telling silence before Turcas spoke. His voice had lost its parchment crinkle and become natural. The blue veins on his bulging temples were a little more pronounced, his thin features a little more pinched, but otherwise he was unchanged and he seemed equal to another strain as heavy as the one he had undergone.
"We have a new government, a new premier," he said. "The old premier was killed by a shot from a crowd that he was addressing from the balcony of the palace. After this, the capital became quieter. As we get in touch with the divisions, we find the army in better shape than we had feared it would be. There is a recovery of spirit, owing to our being on our own soil."
"Yes," replied Westerling, drowning in their stares and grasping at a straw. "Only a panic, as I said. If—" his voice rising hoarsely and catching in rage.
"We have a new government, a new premier!" Turcas repeated, with firm, methodical politeness. Westerling looking from one face to another with filmy eyes, lowered them before Bouchard. "There's a room ready for Your Excellency up-stairs," Turcas continued. "The orderly will show you the way."
Now Westerling grasped the fact that he was no longer chief of staff. He drew himself up in a desperate attempt at dignity; the staff saluted again, and, uncertainly, he followed the orderly, with the aide and valet still in loyal attendance.
Meanwhile, the aerial scouts of the Grays were puzzled by a moving cloud on the landscape several miles away. It filled the highway and overflowed into the fields, without military form: women and men of every age except the fighting age, marching together in a sinister militancy of purpose.
"Bring the children, too!" cried the leaders. "They've more right to be heard than any of us."
From such a nucleus it seemed that the whole population of the land might be set in motion by a common passion. Neither the coming of darkness nor a chill rain kept recruits from village and farmhouse from dropping their tasks and leaving meals unfinished to swell the ranks. What Westerling had called the bovine public with a parrot's head had become a lion.