“No!” he said, banging his desk.  “You’ll run yourself down.”

“But, father, these are war-times.  Could I do less—­could I think of—­”

“You’ve done wonders.  You’ve been the life of this work.  Some one else can carry it on now.  You’d kill yourself.  An’ this war has cost the Andersons enough.”

“Should we count the cost?” she asked.

Anderson had sworn.  “No, we shouldn’t.  But I’m not goin’ to lose my girl.  Do you get that hunch?...  I’ve bought bonds by the bushel.  I’ve given thousands to your relief societies.  I gave up my son Jim—­an’ that cost us mother....  I’m raisin’ a million bushels of wheat this year that the government can have.  An’ I’m starvin’ to death because I don’t get what I used to eat....  Then this last blow—­Dorn!—­that fine young wheat-man, the best—­Aw!  Lenore...”

“But, dad, is—­isn’t there any—­any hope?”

Anderson was silent.

“Dad,” she had pleaded, “if he were really dead—­buried—­oh! wouldn’t I feel it?”

“You’ve overworked yourself.  Now you’ve got to rest,” her father had replied, huskily.

“But, dad ...”

“I said no....  I’ve a heap of pride in what you’ve done.  An’ I sure think you’re the best Anderson of the lot.  That’s all.  Now kiss me an’ go to bed.”

That explained how Lenore came to be alone, high up’ on the vast wheat-slope, watching and feeling, with no more work to do.  The slow climb there had proved to her how much she needed rest.  But work even under strain or pain would have been preferable to endless hours to think, to remember, to fight despair.

Mortally wounded!  She whispered the tragic phrase.  When?  Where?  How had her lover been mortally wounded?  That meant death.  But no other word had come and no spiritual realization of death abided in her soul.  It seemed impossible for Lenore to accept things as her father and friends did.  Nevertheless, equally impossible was it not to be influenced by their practical minds.  Because of her nervousness, of her overstrain, she had lost a good deal of her mental poise; and she divined that the only help for that was certainty of Dorn’s fate.  She could bear the shock if only she could know positively.  And leaning her face in her hands, with the warm wind blowing her hair and bringing the rustle of the wheat, she prayed for divination.

No answer!  Absolutely no mystic consciousness of death—­of an end to her love here on earth!  Instead of that breathed a strong physical presence of life all about her, in the swelling, waving slopes of wheat, in the beautiful butterflies, in the singing birds low down and the soaring eagles high above—­life beating and surging in her heart, her veins, unquenchable and indomitable.  It gave the lie to her morbidness.  But it seemed only a physical state.  How could she find any tangible hold on realities?

She lifted her face to the lonely sky, and her hands pressed to her breast where the deep ache throbbed heavily.