"Ah!" she gasped, as she saw him with cleared sight. A knife-blade was
at her heart. Kurt Dorn lay before her gaze--a man, and not the boy she
had sacrificed to war--a man by a larger frame, and by older features,
and by a change difficult to grasp.

These features seemed a mask, transparent, unable to hide a beautiful,
sad, stern, and ruthless face beneath, which in turn slowly gave to her
startled gaze sloping lines of pain and shades of gloom, and the pale,
set muscles of forced manhood, and the faint hectic flush of fever and
disorder and derangement. A livid, angry scar, smooth, yet scarcely
healed, ran from his left temple back as far as she could see. That
established his identity as a wounded soldier brought home from the war.
Otherwise to Lenore his face might have been that of an immortal
suddenly doomed with the curse of humanity, dying in agony. She had
expected to see Dorn bronzed, haggard, gaunt, starved, bearded and
rough-skinned, bruised and battered, blinded and mutilated, with gray in
his fair hair. But she found none of these. Her throbbing heart sickened
and froze at the nameless history recorded in his face. Was it beyond
her to understand what had been his bitter experience? Would she never
suffer his ordeal? Never! That was certain. An insupportable sadness
pervaded her soul. It was not his life she thought of, but the youth,
the nobility, the splendor of him that war had destroyed. No intuition,
no divination, no power so penetrating as a woman's love! By that
piercing light she saw the transformed man. He knew. He had found out
all of physical life. His hate had gone with his blood. Deeds--deeds of
terror had left their imprint upon his brow, in the shadows under his
eyes, that resembled blank walls potent with invisible meaning. Lenore
shuddered through all her soul as she read the merciless record of the
murder he had dealt, of the strong and passionate duty that had driven
him, of the eternal remorse. But she did not see or feel that he had
found God; and, stricken as he seemed, she could not believe he was near
to death.

This last confounding thought held her transfixed and thrilling, gazing
down at Dorn, until her father entered to break the spell and lead her
away.

CHAPTER XXX

It was night. Lenore should have been asleep, but she sat up in the dark
by the window. Underneath on the porch, her father, with his men as
audience, talked like a torrent. And Lenore, hearing what oth