“Dad, I’m going to insist on staying with Kurt as—­as long as I want,” asserted Lenore, when she had made up her mind.

This worried Anderson, and he appeared at a loss for words.

“I told Kurt I’d marry him the very day he could sit up,” continued Lenore.

“By George! that accounts,” exclaimed her father.  “He’s been tryin’ to sit up, an’ we’ve had hell with him.”

“Dad, he will get well.  And all the sooner if I can be with him more.  He loves me.  I feel I’m the only thing that counteracts—­the—­the madness in his mind—­the death in his soul.”

Anderson made one of his violent gestures.  “I believe you.  That hits me with a bang.  It takes a woman!...  Lenore, what’s your idea?”

“I want to—­to marry him,” murmured Lenore.  “To nurse him—­to take him home to his wheat-fields.”

“You shall have your way,” replied Anderson, beginning to pace the floor.  “It can’t do any harm.  It might save him.  An’ anyway, you’ll be his wife—­if only for ...  By George! we’ll do it.  You never gave me a wrong hunch in your life ... but, girl, it’ll be hard for you to see him when—­when he has the spells.”

“Spells!” echoed Lenore.

“Yes.  You’ve been told that he raves.  But you didn’t know how.  Why, it gets even my nerve!  It fascinated me, but once was enough.  I couldn’t stand to see his face when his Huns come back to him.”

“His Huns!” ejaculated Lenore, shuddering.  “What do you mean?”

“Those Huns he killed come back to him.  He fights them.  You see him go through strange motions, an’ it’s as if his left arm wasn’t gone.  He used his right arm—­an’ the motions he makes are the ones he made when he killed the Huns with his bayonet.  It’s terrible to watch him—­the look on his face!....  I heard at the hospital in New York that in France they photographed him when he had one of the spells....  I’d hate to have you see him then.  But maybe after Doctor Lowell explains it, you’ll understand.”

“Poor boy!  How terrible for him to live it all over!  But when he gets well—­when he has his wheat-hills and me to fill his mind—­those spells will fade.”

“Maybe—­maybe.  I hope so.  Lord knows it’s all beyond me.  But you’re goin’ to have your way.”

Doctor Lowell explained to Lenore that Dorn, like all mentally deranged soldiers, dreamed when he was asleep, and raved when he was out of his mind, of only one thing—­the foe.  In his nightmares Dorn had to be held forcibly.  The doctor said that the remarkable and hopeful indication about Dorn’s condition was a gradual daily gain in strength and a decline in the duration and violence of his bad spells.

This assurance made Lenore happy.  She began to relieve the worn-out nurse during the day, and she prepared herself for the first ordeal of actual experience of Dorn’s peculiar madness.  But Dorn watched her many hours and would not or could not sleep while she was there; and the tenth day of his stay at “Many Waters” passed without her seeing what she dreaded.  Meanwhile he grew perceptibly better.