fate of nations lay behind the eyes of these three men. Indeed they were
like gods.

Most godlike of the three was Dubois. It was for him to decide; the
others at most might suggest. Her woman's soul went out to this grave,
handsome, still, old man, in a passion of instinctive worship.

Once she had taken words of instruction from him direct. She had awaited
them in an ecstasy of happiness--and fear. For her exaltation was made
terrible by the dread that some error might dishonour her....

She watched him now through the glass with all the unpenetrating
minuteness of an impassioned woman's observation.

He said little, she remarked. He looked but little at the maps. The
tall Englishman beside him was manifestly troubled by a swarm of ideas,
conflicting ideas; he craned his neck at every shifting of the little
red, blue, black, and yellow pieces on the board, and wanted to draw the
commander's attention to this and that. Dubois listened, nodded, emitted
a word and became still again, brooding like the national eagle.

His eyes were so deeply sunken under his white eyebrows that she could
not see his eyes; his moustache overhung the mouth from which those
words of decision came. Viard, too, said little; he was a dark man with
a drooping head and melancholy, watchful eyes. He was more intent upon
the French right, which was feeling its way now through Alsace to the
Rhine. He was, she knew, an old colleague of Dubois; he knew him better,
she decided, he trusted him more than this unfamiliar Englishman....

Not to talk, to remain impassive and as far as possible in profile;