“She is afraid of being lonesome!  No harm done!” A week had passed since the Grays had taken the Galland house, and still no word from Marta.  The ring of the bell brought Lanstron to his feet with a startled, boyish bound.

“Very springy, that tendon of Achilles!” muttered Partow.  “And, my boy, take care, take care!” he called suddenly in his sonorous voice, as vast and billowy as his body.  “Take care!  She might unwittingly repeat something you said—­and hold on!” He was amazingly light and vigorous on his feet as he rose and hurried after Lanstron with the quick, short steps of active adiposity.  “She may have seen or heard something.  Ask—­ask what is the spirit of the staff, of the soldiers who have fought?  What is the truth about their losses?  What—­” He broke off at the door of Lanstron’s bedroom.  Lanstron had flung aside a bathrobe that covered a panel door in the closet and already had the receiver in his hand.  “But you know what to ask!” concluded Partow.  A flush of embarrassment crept into the pasty cheeks and a sparkle into his fine old eyes as he withdrew to acquit himself of being an eavesdropper.

It was Marta’s voice and yet not Marta’s, this voice that beat in nervous waves over the wire.

“Lanny—­yes, I, Lanny!  You were right.  Westerling planned to make war deliberately to satisfy his ambition.  He told me so.  The first general attack on the first line of defence is to-night.  Westerling says so!” She had to pause for breath.  “And, Lanny, I want to know some position of the Browns which is weak—­not actually weak, maybe, but some position where the Grays expect terrible resistance and will not find it—­where you will let them in!”

“In the name of—­Marta!  Marta, what—­”

“I am going to fight for the Browns—­for my home!”

In the sheer satisfaction of explaining herself to herself, of voicing her sentiments, she sent the pictures which had wrought the change moving across the screen before Lanstron’s amazed vision.  There was no room for interruption on his part, no question or need of one.  The wire seemed to quiver with the militant tension of her spirit.  It was Marta aflame who was talking at the other end; not aflame for him, but with a purpose that revealed all the latent strength of her personality and daring.

“Yes, the only way is to fight for your home,” she concluded.  “Otherwise, the world would be to the bully and the heads of saints and philosophers and teachers would be egg-shells under his bludgeon.”

“It seems,” said Lanstron, “that this is almost like my own view.”

He was sorry before the words were fairly out of his mouth that he had taken that tack.  It was asking her to back down abruptly from her old principles, which only the weak proselyte will do readily; and she was not a proselyte at all, to her conception.