“Pardon, Mrs. Galland, I have old bones.  They always remind me if I try to play any youthful tricks on them.  Pardon!  I did not see that you were here.  I,” he said, in the monotonous voice of the deaf, which, however, had a certain attractive wistfulness—­“I—­” and from the same throat as he saw the object of her gaze came a vibration of passionate interest.  “Yes, neck and neck!  Coming right for the baron’s tower, neck and neck!” he cried, in the zest of a contest understood and enjoyed.

His hand rose in a vigorous, pulsating gesture; his eyes were snapping; his lips parted in an ecstasy that made him seem twenty years younger; his shoulders broadened and his chest expanded with the indrawing of a deep breath.  This let go, the stoop returned in a sudden reaction, the briefly kindled flame died out of his eyes, his lips took on the droop of age, and he thrust his hat back on his head, pulling the brim low over his brow.

“Wonderful, but terrible—­terrible!” said Mrs. Galland.  “Another horror is added to war, as if there were not already enough.  Oh, I know what war is!  I’ve seen this garden all spattered with blood and dead bodies in a row here at our feet, and heard the groans and the cheers—­the groans of the wounded here in the garden and the cheers of the men who had taken the castle hill!”

Feller, with the lids of shaded eyes half closed, watched the oncoming squadrons in a staring mesmerism.  His only movement was a tattoo of the fingers on his trousers’ legs.

“War!” he exclaimed with motionless lips.  “War!” he repeated softly, coaxingly.  One would easily have mistaken the thought of war as something delightful to him if he had not appeared so gentle and detached.  It seemed doubtful if he realized what he was saying or even that he was speaking aloud.

As the Gray squadron started to turn in order to keep on their side of the white posts which circled around the spur of La Tir, one of the dirigibles failed to respond to its rudder and lost speed; that in the rear, responding too readily, had its leader on the thwart.  An aeroplane, sheering too abruptly to make room, tipped at a dangerous angle and a tragedy seemed due within another wink of the eye.

“Huh-huh-huh!” came from Feller in quick breaths, like the panting of a dog on a hot day.

“Oh!” gasped Mrs. Galland in one long breath of suspense.

The envelope of the second dirigible grazed the envelope of its leader; the groggy plane righted itself and volplaned underneath a dirigible; and, though scattered, the Gray squadron drew away safely from the Brown, which, slowing down, came on as straight as an arrow in unchanged formation in a line over the castle tower.  From the forward Brown aeroplane, as its shadow shot over the garden, pursued by the great, oblong shadows of the dirigibles, a white ball was dropped.  It made a plummet streak until about fifty feet above the earth, when it exploded into a fine shower of powder, leaving intact a pirouetting bit of white.