live?"

"Yes, but it's untrue," she replied, and felt that she might have been
life itself speaking.

"Dear, something's gone--from me. Something vital gone--with the shell
that--took my arm."

_"No!"_ she smiled down upon him. All the conviction of her soul and
faith she projected into that single word and serene smile--all that was
love and woman in her opposing death. A subtle, indefinable change came
over Dorn.

"Lenore--I paid--for my father," he whispered. "I killed Huns!... I
spilled the--blood in me--I hated!... But all was wrong--wrong!"

"Yes, but you could not help that," she said, piercingly. "Blame can
never rest upon you. You were only an--American soldier.... Oh, I know!
You were magnificent.... But your duty that way is done. A higher duty
awaits you."

His eyes questioned sadly and wonderingly.

"You must be the great sower of wheat."

"Sower of wheat?" he whispered, and a light quickened in that
questioning gaze.

"There will be starving millions after this war. Wheat is the staff of
life. You _must_ get well.... Listen!"

She hesitated, and sank to her knees beside the bed. "Kurt, the day
you're able to sit up I'll marry you. Then I'll take you home--to your
wheat-hills."

For a second Lenore saw him transformed with her spirit, her faith, her
love, and it was that for which she had prayed. She had carried him
beyond the hopelessness, beyond incredulity. Some guidance had divinely
prompted her. And when his mute rapture suddenly vanished, when he lost
consciousness and a pale gloom and shade fell upon his face, she had no
fear.

In her own room she unleashed the strange bonds on her feelings and
suffered their recurrent surge and strife, until relief and calmness
returned to her. Then came a flashing uplift of soul, a great and
beautiful exaltation. Lenore felt that she had been gifted with
incalculable power. She had pierced Dorn's fatalistic consciousness with
the truth and glory of possible life, as opposed to the dark and evil
morbidity of war. She saw for herself the wonderful and terrible stairs
of sand which women had been climbing all the ages, and must climb on to
the heights of solid rock, of equality, of salvation for the human race.
She saw woman, the primitive, the female of the species, but she saw her
also as the mother of the species, made to save as well as perpetuate,
learning from the agony of child-birth and child-care the meaning of Him
who said, "Thou shalt not k