These features seemed a mask, transparent, unable to hide a beautiful, sad, stern, and ruthless face beneath, which in turn slowly gave to her startled gaze sloping lines of pain and shades of gloom, and the pale, set muscles of forced manhood, and the faint hectic flush of fever and disorder and derangement.  A livid, angry scar, smooth, yet scarcely healed, ran from his left temple back as far as she could see.  That established his identity as a wounded soldier brought home from the war.  Otherwise to Lenore his face might have been that of an immortal suddenly doomed with the curse of humanity, dying in agony.  She had expected to see Dorn bronzed, haggard, gaunt, starved, bearded and rough-skinned, bruised and battered, blinded and mutilated, with gray in his fair hair.  But she found none of these.  Her throbbing heart sickened and froze at the nameless history recorded in his face.  Was it beyond her to understand what had been his bitter experience?  Would she never suffer his ordeal?  Never!  That was certain.  An insupportable sadness pervaded her soul.  It was not his life she thought of, but the youth, the nobility, the splendor of him that war had destroyed.  No intuition, no divination, no power so penetrating as a woman’s love!  By that piercing light she saw the transformed man.  He knew.  He had found out all of physical life.  His hate had gone with his blood.  Deeds—­deeds of terror had left their imprint upon his brow, in the shadows under his eyes, that resembled blank walls potent with invisible meaning.  Lenore shuddered through all her soul as she read the merciless record of the murder he had dealt, of the strong and passionate duty that had driven him, of the eternal remorse.  But she did not see or feel that he had found God; and, stricken as he seemed, she could not believe he was near to death.

This last confounding thought held her transfixed and thrilling, gazing down at Dorn, until her father entered to break the spell and lead her away.

CHAPTER XXX

It was night.  Lenore should have been asleep, but she sat up in the dark by the window.  Underneath on the porch, her father, with his men as audience, talked like a torrent.  And Lenore, hearing what otherwise would never have gotten to her ears, found listening irresistible.  Slow, dragging footsteps and the clinking of spurs attested to the approach of cowboys.

“Howdy, boys!  Sit down an’ be partic’lar quiet.  Here’s some smokes.  I’m wound up an’ gotta go off or bust,” Anderson said, “Well, as I was sayin’, we folks don’t know there’s a war, from all outward sign here in the Northwest.  But in that New York town I just come from—­God Almighty! what goin’s-on!  Boys, I never knew before how grand it was to be American.  New York’s got the people, the money, an’ it’s the outgoin’ an’ incomin’ place of all pertainin’ to this war.  The Liberty Loan drive was on.  The streets were crowded.