“I meant to kill him!”

“That was easy to tell....  Oh, thank God, you did not!...  Come, don’t let us stop.”  She could not face the piercing, gloomy eyes that went through her.

“Why should you care?....  Some one will have to kill Glidden.”

“Oh, do not talk so,” she implored.  “Surely, now you’re glad you did not?”

“I don’t understand myself.  But I’m certainly sorry you were there....  There’s a beast in men—­in me!...  I had a gun in my pocket.  But do you think I’d have used it?...  I wanted to feel his flesh tear, his bones break, his blood spurt—­”

“Kurt!”

“Yes!...  That was the Hun in me!” he declared, in sudden bitter passion.

“Oh, my friend, do not talk so!” she cried.  “You make me—­Oh, there is no Hun in you!”

“Yes, that’s what ails me!”

“There is not!” she flashed back, roused to passion.  “You had been made desperate.  You acted as any wronged man!  You fought.  He tried to kill you.  I saw the gun.  No one could blame you....  I had my own reason for begging dad to keep you from killing him—­a selfish woman’s reason!...  But I tell you I was so furious—­so wrought up—­that if it had been any man but you—­he should have killed him!”

“Lenore, you’re beyond my understanding,” replied Dorn, with emotion.  “But I thank you—­for excusing me—­for standing up for me.”

“It was nothing....Oh, how you bleed!....  Doesn’t that hurt?”

“I’ve no pain—­no feeling at all—­except a sort of dying down in me of what must have been hell.”

They reached the house and went in.  No one was there, which fact relieved Lenore.

“I’m glad mother and the girls won’t see you,” she said, hurriedly.  “Go up to your room.  I’ll bring bandages.”

He complied without any comment.  Lenore searched for what she needed to treat a wound and ran up-stairs.  Dorn was sitting on a chair in his room, holding his arm, from which blood dripped to the floor.  He smiled at her.

“You would be a pretty Red Cross nurse,” he said.

Lenore placed a bowl of water on the floor and, kneeling beside Dorn, took his arm and began to bathe it.  He winced.  The blood covered her fingers.

“My blood on your hands!” he exclaimed, morbidly.  “German blood!”

“Kurt, you’re out of your head,” retorted Lenore, hotly.  “If you dare to say that again I’ll—­” She broke off.

“What will you do?”

Lenore faltered.  What would she do?  A revelation must come, sooner or later, and the strain had begun to wear upon her.  She was stirred to her depths, and instincts there were leaping.  No sweet, gentle, kindly sympathy would avail with this tragic youth.  He must be carried by storm.  Something of the violence he had shown with Glidden seemed necessary to make him forget himself.  All his whole soul must be set in one direction.  He could not see that she loved him, when she had looked it, acted it, almost spoken it.  His blindness was not to be endured.