“I’m sorry for that,” he replied, soberly, as he brushed a hand up through his wet hair.

“But you will stay home?”

“No,” he returned, shortly, and he looked hard.

“Kurt, I don’t want you mixed up with any lynching-bees,” she said, earnestly.

“I’m a citizen of Washington.  I’ll join the vigilantes.  I’m American.  I’ve been ruined by these I.W.W.’s.  No man in the West has lost so much!  Father—­home—­land—­my great harvest of wheat!...  Why shouldn’t I go?”

“There’s no reason except—­me,” she replied, rather unsteadily.

He drew himself up, with a deep breath, as if fortifying himself.  “That’s a mighty good reason....  But you will be kinder if you withdraw your objections.”

“Can’t you conceive of any reason why I—­I beg you not to go?”

“I can’t,” he replied, staring at her.  It seemed that every moment he spent in her presence increased her effect upon him.  Lenore felt this, and that buoyed up her failing courage.

“Kurt, you’ve made a very distressing—­a terrible and horrible blunder,” she said, with a desperation that must have seemed something else to him.

“My heavens!  What have I done?” he gasped, his face growing paler.  How ready he was to see more catastrophe!  It warmed her heart and strengthened her nerve.

The moment had come.  Even if she did lose her power of speech she still could show him what his blunder was.  Nothing in all her life had ever been a hundredth part as hard as this.  Yet, as the words formed, her whole heart seemed to be behind them, forcing them out.  If only he did not misunderstand!

Then she looked directly at him and tried to speak.  Her first attempt was inarticulate, her second was a whisper, “Didn’t you ever—­think I—­I might care for you?”

It was as if a shock went over him, leaving him trembling.  But he did not look as amazed as incredulous.  “No, I certainly never did,” he said.

“Well—­that’s your blunder—­for I—­I do.  You—­you never—­never—­asked me.”

“You do what—­care for me?...  What on earth do you mean by that?”

Lenore was fighting many emotions now, the one most poignant being a wild desire to escape, which battled with an equally maddening one to hide her face on his breast.

Yet she could see how white he had grown—­how different.  His hands worked convulsively and his eyes pierced her very soul.

“What should a girl mean—­telling she cared?”

“I don’t know.  Girls are beyond me,” he replied, stubbornly.

“Indeed that’s true.  I’ve felt so far beyond you—­I had to come to this.”

“Lenore,” he burst out, hoarsely, “you talk in riddles!  You’ve been so strange, yet so fine, so sweet!  And now you say you care for me!...  Care?...  What does that mean?  A word can drive me mad.  But I never dared to hope.  I love you—­love you—­love you—­my God! you’re all I’ve left to love.  I—­”