"Look!" she cried. "Look, look!" she repeated, a girlish excitement rippling her placidity.

Aeroplanes and dirigibles had become a familiar sight. They were always going and coming and man[oe]uvring, the Browns over their territory and the Grays over theirs. But here was something new: two squadrons of dirigibles and planes in company, one on either side of the white posts. For the fraction of a second the dirigibles seemed prisms and the planes still-winged dragon-flies hung on a blue wall. With the next fraction the prisms were seen to be growing and the stretch of the plane wings broadening.

"They are racing—ours against theirs!" exclaimed Mrs. Galland. "Look, look!"

Still the gardener bent to his work, unconcerned.

"I forgot! I always forget that you are deaf!" she murmured.

She touched his shoulder. The effect was magical on the stoop-shouldered figure, which rose with the spring of muscles that are elastic and joints that are limber. His hat was removed with prompt and rather graceful deference, revealing eyebrows that were still dark in contrast to the white hair. For only an instant did he remain erect, but long enough to suggest how supple and well-formed he must have been in youth. Then he made a grimace and dropped his hand demonstratively over his knee.

"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 

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