She seemed to doubt the sincerity of what she saw there and loved so well.  Moon-blanched and serene, lonely and silent, beautiful and promising, the wide acres of “Many Waters,” and the silver slopes and dark mountains beyond, did not tell the truth.  ’Way over the dark ranges a hideous war had stretched out a red hand to her country.  Her only brother had left his home to fight, and there was no telling if he would ever come back.  Evil forces were at work out there in the moonlight.  There had come a time for her to be thoughtful.

Her father’s asking her to ride to the Bend country had caused some strange little shock of surprise.  Lenore had dreamed without thinking.  Here in the darkness and silence, watching the crescent moon slowly sink, she did think.  And it was to learn that she remembered singularly well the first time she had seen young Dorn, and still more vividly the second time, but the third time seemed both clear and vague.  Enough young men had been smitten with Lenore to enable her to gauge the symptoms of these easy-come, easy-go attractions.  In fact, they rather repelled her.  But she had found Dorn’s manner striking, confusing, and unforgettable.  And why that should be so interested her intelligence.

It was confusing to discover that she could not lay it to the sympathy she had felt for an American boy in a difficult position, because she had often thought of him long before she had any idea who he was or where he lived.

In the very first place, he had been unforgettable for two reasons—­because he had been so struck at sight of her that he had gazed unconsciously, with a glow on his face and a radiance in his eye, as of a young poet spellbound at an inspiration; and because he seemed the physical type of young man she had idealized—­a strong, lithe-limbed, blond giant, with a handsome, frank face, clear-cut and smooth, ruddy-cheeked and blue-eyed.

Only after meeting him out there in the desert of wheat had she felt sympathy for him.  And now with intelligence and a woman’s intuition, barring the old, insidious, dreamy mood, Lenore went over in retrospect all she could remember of that meeting.  And the truth made her sharply catch her breath.  Dorn had fallen in love with her.  Intuition declared that, while her intelligence repudiated it.  Stranger than all was the thrill which began somewhere in the unknown depths of her and mounted, to leave her tingling all over.  She had told her father that she did not want to ride to the Bend country.  But she did want to go!  And that thought, flashing up, would not be denied.  To want to meet a strange young man again was absolutely a new and irritating discovery for Lenore.  It mystified her, because she had not had time to like Dorn.  Liking an acquaintance had nothing to do with the fact.  And that stunned her.

“Could it be—­love at first sight?” she whispered, incredulously, as she stared out over the shadowing fields.