She kissed him and knelt beside his bed, grieved to see shadow return to his face, yet thrilling that the way seemed open for her to inspire.  But she must never again choose to talk of war, of materialism, of anything calculated to make him look into darkness of his soul, to ponder over the impairment of his mind.  She remembered the great specialist speaking of lesions of the organic system, of a loss of brain cells.  Her inspiration must be love, charm, care—­a healing and building process.  She would give herself in all the unutterableness and immeasurableness of her woman’s heart.  She would order her life so that it would be a fulfilment of his education, of a heritage from his fathers, a passion born in him, a noble work through which surely he could be saved—­the cultivation of wheat.

“Do you love me?” she whispered.

“Do I!...  Nothing could ever change my love for you.”

“I am your wife, you know.”

The shadow left his face.

“Are you?  Really?  Lenore Anderson...”

“Lenore Dorn.  It is a beautiful name now.”

“It does sound sweet.  But you—­my wife?  Never will I believe!”

“You will have to—­very soon.”

“Why?” A light, warm and glad and marveling, shone in his eyes.  Indeed, Lenore felt then a break in the strange aloofness of him—­in his impersonal, gentle acceptance of her relation to him.

“To-morrow I’m going to take you home to your wheat-hills.”

CHAPTER XXXII

Lenore told her conception of the history and the romance of wheat to Dorn at this critical time when it was necessary to give a trenchant call to hope and future.

In the beginning man’s struggle was for life and the mainstay of life was food.  Perhaps the original discoverer of wheat was a meat-eating savage who, in roaming the forests and fields, forced by starvation to eat bark and plant and berry, came upon a stalk of grain that chewed with strange satisfaction.  Perhaps through that accident he became a sower of wheat.

Who actually were the first sowers of wheat would never be known.  They were older than any history, and must have been among the earliest of the human race.

The development of grain produced wheat, and wheat was ground into flour, and flour was baked into bread, and bread had for untold centuries been the sustenance and the staff of life.

Centuries ago an old Chaldean priest tried to ascertain if wheat had ever grown wild.  That question never was settled.  It was universally believed, however, that wheat had to have the cultivation of man.  Nevertheless, the origin of the plant must have been analogous to that of other plants.  Wheat-growers must necessarily have been people who stayed long in one place.  Wandering tribes could not till and sow the fields.  The origin of wheat furnished a legendary theme for many races, and mythology contained