At last a step—­a knock—­her father’s voice:  “Lenore—­come!”

Her ordeal of waiting was over.  All else she could withstand.  That moment ended her weakness.  Her blood leaped with the irresistable, revivifying current of her spirit.  Unlocking the door, Lenore stepped out.  Her father stood there with traces of extreme worry fading from his tired face.  At sight of her they totally vanished.

“Good!  You’ve got nerve.  You can see him now alone.  He’s unconscious.  But he’s not been greatly weakened by the trip.  His vitality is wonderful.  He comes to once in a while.  Sometimes he’s rational.  Mostly, though, he’s out of his head.  An’ his left arm is gone.”

Anderson said all this rapidly and low while they walked down the hall toward the end room which had not been used since Mrs. Anderson’s death.  The door was ajar.  Lenore smelled strong, pungent odors of antiseptics.

Anderson knocked softly.

“Come out, you men, an’ let my girl see him,” he called.

Doctor Lowell, the village practitioner Lenore had known for years, tiptoed out, important and excited.

“Lenore, it’s to bad,” he said, kindly, and he shook his head.

Another man glided out with the movements of a woman.  He was not young.  His aspect was pale, serious.

“Lenore, this is Mr. Jarvis, the nurse....  Now—­go in, an’ don’t forget what I said.”

She closed the door and leaned back against it, conscious of the supreme moment of her life.  Dorn’s face, strange yet easily recognizable, appeared against the white background of the bed.  That moment was supreme because it showed him there alive, justifying the spiritual faith which had persisted in her soul.  If she had ever, in moments of distraction, doubted God, she could never doubt again.

The large room had been bright, with white curtains softly blowing inward from the open windows.  As she crept forward, not sure on her feet, all seemed to blur, so that when she leaned over the still face to kiss it she could not see clearly.  Her lips quivered with that kiss and with her sob of thankfulness.

“My soldier!”

She prayed then, with her head beside his on the pillow, and through that prayer and the strange stillness of her lover she received a subtle shock.  Sweet it was to touch him as she bent with eyes hidden.  Terrible it would be to look—­to see how the war had wrecked him.  She tried to linger there, all tremulous, all gratitude, all woman and mother.  But an incalculable force lifted her up from her knees.

“Ah!” she gasped, as she saw him with cleared sight.  A knife-blade was at her heart.  Kurt Dorn lay before her gaze—­a man, and not the boy she had sacrificed to war—­a man by a larger frame, and by older features, and by a change difficult to grasp.