“Oh, d—­dad,” she whispered, with a soft, hushed voice that broke tremulously at her lips, “I—­I love him!...  I do love him....  It’s terrible!...  I knew it—­that last time you took me to his home—­when he said he was going to war....  And, oh, now you know!”

Anderson held her tight against his broad breast that lifted her with its great heave.  “Ah-huh!  Reckon that’s some relief.  I wasn’t so darn sure,” said Anderson.  “Has he spoken to you?”

“Spoken!  What do you mean?”

“Has Dorn told you he loved you?”

Lenore lifted her face.  If that confession of hers had been relief to her father it had been more so to her.  What had seemed terrible began to feel natural.  Still, she was all intense, vibrating, internally convulsed.

“Yes, he has,” she replied, shyly.  “But such a confession!  He told it as if to explain what he thought was boldness on his part.  He had fallen in love with me at first sight!...  And then meeting me was too much for him.  He wanted me to know.  He was going away to war.  He asked nothing....  He seemed to apologize for—­for daring to love me.  He asked nothing.  And he has absolutely not the slightest idea I care for him.”

“Wal, I’ll be dog-goned!” ejaculated Anderson.  “What’s the matter with him?”

“Dad, he is proud,” replied Lenore, dreamily.  “He’s had a hard struggle out there in his desert of wheat.  They’ve always been poor.  He imagines there’s a vast distance between an heiress of ‘Many Waters’ and a farmer boy.  Then, more than all, I think, the war has fixed a morbid trouble in his mind.  God knows it must be real enough!  A house divided against itself is what he called his home.  His father is German.  He is American.  He worshiped his mother, who was a native of the United States.  He has become estranged from his father.  I don’t know—­I’m not sure—­but I felt that he was obsessed by a calamity in his German blood.  I divined that was the great reason for his eagerness to go to war.”

“Wal, Kurt Dorn’s not goin’ to war,” replied her father.  “I fixed that all right.”

An amazing and rapturous start thrilled over Lenore.  “Daddy!” she cried, leaping up in his arms, “what have you done?”

“I got exemption for him, that’s what,” replied Anderson, with great satisfaction.

“Exemption!” exclaimed Lenore, in bewilderment.

“Don’t you remember the government official from Washington?  You met him in Spokane.  He was out West to inspire the farmers to raise more wheat.  There are many young farmers needed a thousand times more on the wheat-fields than on the battle-fields.  An’ Kurt Dorn is one of them.  That boy will make the biggest sower of wheat in the Northwest.  I recommended exemption for Dorn.  An’ he’s exempted an’ doesn’t know it.”

“Doesn’t know!  He’ll never accept exemption,” declared Lenore.

“Lass, I’m some worried myself,” rejoined Anderson.  “Reckon you’ve explained Dorn to me—­that somethin’ queer about him....  But he’s sensible.  He can be told things.  An’ he’ll see how much more he’s needed to raise wheat than to kill Germans.”