Life seemed so stingingly full, so poignant, so immeasurably worth living, so blessed with beauty and richness and fruitfulness.

“Lenore, your eyes are windows—­and I can see into your soul.  I can read—­and first I’m uplifted and then I’m sad.”

It was he who talked and she who listened.  This glorious day would be her strength when the—­Ah! but she would not complete a single bitter thought.

She led him away, up the slope, across the barley-field, now cut and harvested, to the great, swelling golden spaces of wheat.  Far below, the engines and harvesters were humming.  Here the wheat waved and rustled in the wind.  It was as high as Lenore’s head.

“It’s fine wheat,” observed Dorn.  “But the wheat of my desert hills was richer, more golden, and higher than this.”

“No regrets to-day!” murmured Lenore, leaning to him.

There was magic in those words—­the same enchantment that made the hours fly.  She led him, at will, here and there along the rustling-bordered lanes.  From afar they watched the busy harvest scene, with eyes that lingered long on a great, glittering combine with its thirty-two horses plodding along.

“I can drive them.  Thirty-two horses!” she asserted, proudly.

“No!”

“Yes.  Will you come?  I will show you.”

“It is a temptation,” he said, with a sigh.  “But there are eyes there.  They would break the spell.”

“Who’s talking about eyes now?” she cried.

They spent the remainder of that day on the windy wheat-slope, high up, alone, with the beauty and richness of “Many Waters” beneath them.  And when the sun sent its last ruddy and gold rays over the western hills, and the weary harvesters plodded homeward, Lenore still lingered, loath to break the spell.  For on the way home, she divined, he would tell her he was soon to leave.

Sunset and evening star!  Their beauty and serenity pervaded Lenore’s soul.  Surely there was a life somewhere else, beyond in that infinite space.  And the defeat of earthly dreams was endurable.

They walked back down the wheat lanes hand in hand, as dusk shadowed the valley; and when they reached the house he told her gently that he must go.

“But—­you will stay to-night?” she whispered.

“No.  It’s all arranged,” he replied, thickly.  “They’re to drive me over—­my train’s due at eight....  I’ve kept it—­till the last few minutes.”

They went in together.

“We’re too late for dinner,” said Lenore, but she was not thinking of that, and she paused with head bent.  “I—­I want to say good-by to you—­here.”  She pointed to the dim, curtained entrance of the living-room.

“I’d like that, too,” he replied.  “I’ll go up and get my bag.  Wait.”

Lenore slowly stepped to that shadowed spot beyond the curtains where she had told her love to Dorn; and there she stood, praying and fighting for strength to let him go, for power to conceal her pain.  The one great thing she could do was to show him that she would not stand in the way of his duty to himself.  She realized then that if he had told her sooner, if he were going to remain one more hour at “Many Waters,” she would break down and beseech him not to leave her.