Westward the spray of a grey sea dripped from the muzzles of a thousand guns.
Eastward the coldly logical strategy of a great commander was developing, and the first fierce drive at Alsace-Lorraine was being launched.
From farther eastward still the two allies, listening, caught already the low growling of the Russian bear.
Germany, poised high above the glare of battle, waiting to snatch up, one by one, heroic and dying nations to her bosom—Germany clutching the dripping sword of conquest, heard also the rumbling of the Asiatic monster behind the Caucasus.
She turned her armed head and stared over her mailed shoulder toward the east, haughty, incredulous, magnificently barbaric—the last of the Valkyries left amid the dying gods of old, standing there alone, glittering, motionless amid the hellish conflagration of the Götterdämmerung.
Warner looked up at the stars.
The glimmering writing on Heaven's wall was plain to read.
Plainer, it seemed, than his own heart, which had grown heavy as he stood there beside the woman to whom it was now too late to speak.
For he should have spoken before, long ago, almost in the beginning. Because he had always loved her. He had known it for days, now; and yet with that blind delay and distrust of self to which some men are fated, he had waited too long to ask of her what his heart had so long, so blindly desired.
Now it was too late: He should have spoken before.