Marta scanned the faces of the staff for some sign of dissent only to find nothing but the ardor of victory calling for more victory, which reflected the feeling of the coursing crowds in the capital.  Though Lanny wished to stop the war, he was only a chip on the crest of a wave.  Public opinion, which had made him an idol, would discard him as soon as he ceased to be a hero in the likeness of its desires.  She saw him aloof as the others, in preoccupation, bent over the map outlining the plan of attack that they had worked out while awaiting their chief’s return from the charge.  He was taking a paper from his pocket and looking from one to another of his colleagues studiously; and she was conscious of that determination in his smile which she had first seen when he rose from the wreck of his plane.

“This is from Partow:  a message for you and the nation!” he announced, as he spread a few thin, typewritten pages out on the table.  “I was under promise never to reveal its contents unless our army drove the Grays back across the frontier.  The original is in the staff vaults.  I have carried this copy with me.”

At the mention in an arresting tone of that name of the dead chief, to which the day’s events had given the prestige of one of the heroes of old, there was grave attention.

“I think we have practically agreed that the two individuals who were invaluable to our cause were Partow and Miss Galland,” Lanstron remarked tentatively.  He waited for a reply.  It was apparent that he was laying a foundation before he went any further.

“Certainly!” said the vice-chief.

“And you!” put in another officer, which brought a chorus of assent.

“No, not I—­only these two!” Lanstron replied.  “Or, I, too, if you prefer.  It little matters.  The thing is that I am under a promise to both, which I shall respect.  He organized and labored for the same purpose that she played the spy.  When we sent the troops forward in a counter-attack and pursuit to clear our soil of the Grays; when I stopped them at the frontier—­both were according to Partow’s plan.  He had a plan and a dream, this wonderful old man who made us all seem primary pupils in the art of war.”

Could this be that terrible Partow, a stroke of whose pencil had made the Galland house an inferno?  Marta wondered as Lanstron read his message—­the message out of the real heart of the man, throbbing with the power of his great brain.  His plan was to hold the Grays to stalemate; to force them to desist after they had battered their battalions to pieces against the Brown fortifications.  His dream was the thing that had happened—­that an opportunity would come to pursue a broken machine in a bold stroke of the offensive.

“I would want to be a hero of our people for only one aim, to be able to stop our army at the frontier,” he had written.  “Then they might drive me forth heaped with obloquy, if they chose.  I should like to see the Grays demoralized, beaten, ready to sue for peace, the better to prove my point that we should ask only for what is ours and that our strength was only for the purpose of holding what is ours.  Then we should lay up no legacy of revenge in their hearts.  They could never have cause to attack again.  Civilization would have advanced another step.”