His jocular tone did not hide his deep earnestness.  Never had Lenore felt him so forceful.  His ruggedness seemed to steady her nerves that again began to fly.  Anderson took her into his office, closed the door, threw down his valise.

“Great to be home!” he exploded, with heavy breath.

Lenore felt her face blanch; and that intense quiver within her suddenly stilled.

“Tell me—­quick!” she whispered.

He faced her with flashing eyes, and all about him changed.  “You’re an Anderson!  You can stand shock?”

“Any—­any shock but suspense.”

“I lied about the wheat deal—­about my trip to New York.  I got news of Dorn.  I was afraid to tell you.”

“Yes?”

“Dorn is alive,” went on Anderson.

Lenore’s hands went out in mute eloquence.

“He was all shot up.  He can’t live,” hurried Anderson, hoarsely.  “But he’s alive—­he’ll live to see you.”

“Oh!  I knew, I knew!” whispered Lenore clasping her hands.  “Oh, thank God!”

“Lenore, steady now.  You’re gettin’ shaky.  Brace there, my girl!...  Dorn’s alive.  I’ve brought him home.  He’s here.”

“Here!” screamed Lenore.

“Yes.  They’ll have him here in half an hour.”

Lenore fell into her father’s arms, blind and deaf to all outward things.  The light of day failed.  But her consciousness did not fade.  Before it seemed a glorious radiance that was the truth lost for the moment, blindly groping, in whirling darkness.  When she did feel herself again it was as a weak, dizzy, palpitating child, unable to stand.  Her father, in alarm, and probable anger with himself, was coaxing and swearing in one breath.  Then suddenly the joy that had shocked Lenore almost into collapse forced out the weakness with amazing strength.  She blazed.  She radiated.  She burst into utterance too swift to understand.

“Hold on there, girl!” interrupted Anderson.  “You’ve got the bit in your teeth....  Listen, will you?  Let me talk.  Well—­well, there now....  Sure, it’s all right, Lenore.  You made me break it sudden-like....  Listen.  There’s all summer to talk.  Just now you want to get a few details.  Get ’em straight....  Dorn is on the way here.  They put his stretcher—­we’ve been packin’ him on one—­into a motor-truck.  There’s a nurse come with me—­a man nurse.  We’d better put Dorn in mother’s room.  That’s the biggest an’ airiest.  You hurry an’ open up the windows an’ fix the bed....  An’ don’t go out of your head with joy.  It’s sure more ’n we ever hoped for to see him alive, to get him home.  But he’s done for, poor boy!  He can’t live....  An’ he’s in such shape that I don’t want you to see him when they fetch him in.  Savvy, girl!  You’ll stay in your room till we call you.  An’ now rustle.”

* * * * *

Lenore paced and crouched and lay in her room, waiting, listening with an intensity that hurt.  When a slow procession of men, low-voiced and soft-footed, carried Kurt Dorn into the house and up-stairs Lenore trembled with a storm of emotion.  All her former agitation, love, agony, and suspense, compared to what she felt then, was as nothing.  Not the joy of his being alive, not the terror of his expected death, had so charged her heart as did this awful curiosity to see him, to realize him.