o throb and pant with
heavy sighs, to lie sleepless in the long dark night, to shrink with
unutterable sadness at the wan light of dawn, to follow duty with a
laggard sense, to feel the slow ebb of vitality and not to care, to
suffer with a breaking heart.

* * * * *

Sunset hour reminded Lenore that she must not linger there on the slope.
So, following the grass-grown lane between the sections of wheat, she
wended a reluctant way homeward. Twilight was falling when she reached
the yard. The cooling air was full of a fragrance of flowers freshly
watered. Kathleen appeared on the path, evidently waiting for her. The
girl was growing tall. Lenore remembered with a pang that her full mind
had left little time for her to be a mother to this sister. Kathleen
came running, excited and wide-eyed.

"Lenore, I thought you'd never come," she said. "I know something. Only
dad told me not to tell you."

"Then don't," replied Lenore, with a little start.

"But I'd never keep it," burst out Kathleen, breathlessly. "Dad's going
to New York."

Lenore's heart contracted. She did not know how she felt. Somehow it was
momentous news.

"New York! What for?" she asked.

"He says it's about wheat. But he can't fool me. He told me not to
mention it to you."

The girl was keen. She wanted to prepare Lenore, yet did not mean to
confide her own suppositions. Lenore checked a rush of curiosity. They
went into the house. Lenore hurried to change her outing clothes and
boots and then went down to supper. Rose sat at table, but her father
had not yet come in. Lenore called him. He answered, and presently came
tramping into the dining-room, blustering and cheerful. Not for many
months had Lenore given her father such close scrutiny as she did then.
He was not natural, and he baffled her. A fleeting, vague hope that she
had denied lodgment in her mind seemed to have indeed been wild and
unfounded. But the very fact that her father was for once unfathomable
made this situation remarkable. All through the meal Lenore trembled,
and she had to force herself to eat.

"Lenore, I'd like to see you," said her father, at last, as he laid down
his napkin and rose. Almost he convinced her then that nothing was amiss
or different, and he would have done so if he had not been too clever,
too natural. She rose to follow, catching Kathleen's whisper:

"Don't let him put it over on you, now!"

Anderson lighted a big ciga