“Not if.  I am going,” he interrupted.

“Oh, so you say,” returned Lenore, softly.  And she felt deep in her the inception of a tremendous feminine antagonism.  It stirred along her pulse.  “Have your own way, then.  But I say, if you go, think how fine it will be for me to get letters from you at the front—­and to write you!”

“You’d like to hear from me?...  You would answer?” he asked, breathlessly.

“Assuredly.  And I’ll knit socks for you.”

“You’re—­very good,” he said, with strong feeling.

Lenore again saw his eyes dim.  How strangely sensitive he was!  If he exaggerated such a little kindness as she had suggested, if he responded to it with such emotion, what would he do when the great and marvelous truth of her love was flung in his face?  The very thought made Lenore weak.

“You’ll go to training-camp,” went on Lenore, “and because of your wonderful physique and your intelligence you will get a commission.  Then you’ll go to—­France.”  Lenore faltered a little in her imagined prospect.  “You’ll be in the thick of the great battles.  You’ll give and take.  You’ll kill some of those—­those—­Germans.  You’ll be wounded and you’ll be promoted....  Then the Allies will win.  Uncle Sam’s grand army will have saved the world....  Glorious!...  You’ll come back—­home to us—­to take the place dad offered you....  There! that is the bright side.”

Indeed, the brightness seemed reflected in Dorn’s face.

“I never dreamed you could be like this,” he said, wonderingly.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know just what I mean.  Only you’re different from my—­my fancies.  Not cold or—­or proud.”

“You’re beginning to get acquainted with me, that’s all.  After you’ve been here awhile—­”

“Please don’t make it so hard for me,” he interrupted, appealingly.  “I can’t stay.”

“Don’t you want to?” she asked.

“Yes.  And I will stay a couple of days.  But no longer.  It’ll be hard enough to go then.”

“Perhaps I—­we’ll make it so hard for you that you can’t go.”

Then he gazed piercingly at her, as if realizing a will opposed to his, a conviction not in sympathy with his.

“You’re going to keep this up—­this trying to change my mind?”

“I surely am,” she replied, both wistfully and wilfully.

“Why?  I should think you’d respect my sense of duty.”

“Your duty is more here than at the front.  The government man said so.  My father believes it.  So do I....  You have some other—­other thing you think duty.”

“I hate Germans!” he burst out, with a dark and terrible flash.

“Who does not?” she flashed back at him, and she rose, feeling as if drawn by a powerful current.  She realized then that she must be prepared any moment to be overwhelmed by the inevitable climax of this meeting.  But she prayed for a little more time.  She fought her emotions.