“So they are.  I got that punching our German friend.”

“Oh, how you did beat him!” she cried.  “I had to look.  My ire was up, too!...  It wasn’t very womanly—­of me—­that I gloried in the sight.”

“But you cried out—­you pulled me away!” exclaimed Kurt.

“That was because I was afraid you’d kill him,” she replied.

Kurt swerved his glance, for an instant, to her face.  It was at once flushed and pale, with the deep blue of downcast eyes shadowy through her long lashes, exceedingly sweet and beautiful to Kurt’s sight.  He bent his glance again to the road ahead.  Miss Anderson felt kindly and gratefully toward him, as was, of course, natural.  But she was somehow different from what she had seemed upon the other occasions he had seen her.  Kurt’s heart was full to bursting.

“I might have killed him,” he said.  “I’m glad—­you stopped me.  That—­that frenzy of mine seemed to be the breaking of a dam.  I have been dammed up within.  Something had to break.  I’ve been unhappy for a long time.”

“I saw that.  What about?” she replied.

“The war, and what it’s done to father.  We’re estranged.  I hate everything German.  I loved the farm.  My chance in life is gone.  The wheat debt—­the worry about the I.W.W.—­and that’s not all.”

Again she put a gentle hand on his sleeve and left it there for a moment.  The touch thrilled all through Kurt.

“I’m sorry.  Your position is sad.  But maybe it is not utterly hopeless.  You—­you’ll come back after the war.”

“I don’t know that I want to come back,” he said.  “For then—­it’d be just as bad—­worse....  Miss Anderson, it won’t hurt to tell you the truth....  A year ago—­that first time I saw you—­I fell in love with you.  I think—­when I’m away—­over in France—­I’d like to feel that you know.  It can’t hurt you.  And it’ll be sweet to me....  I fought against the—­the madness.  But fate was against me....  I saw you again....  And it was all over with me!”

He paused, catching his breath.  She was perfectly quiet.  He looked on down the winding road.  There were dust-clouds in the distance.

“I’m afraid I grew bitter and moody,” he went on.  “But the last forty-eight hours have changed me forever...  I found that my poor old dad had been won over by these unscrupulous German agents of the I.W.W.  But I saved his name....  I’ve got the money he took for the wheat we may never harvest.  But if we do harvest I can pay all our debt....  Then I learned of a plot to ruin your father—­to kill him!...  I was on my way to ‘Many Waters.’  I can warn him....  Last of all I have saved you.”

The little hand dropped away from his coat sleeve.  A soft, half-smothered cry escaped her.  It seemed to him she was about to weep in her exceeding pity.

“Miss Anderson, I—­I’d rather not have—­you pity me.”

“Mr. Dorn, I certainly don’t pity you,” she replied, with an unexpected, strange tone.  It was full.  It seemed to ring in his ears.