his throat, Kurt
Dorn stood stock-still, watching the moving cloud of dust until it
disappeared over the hill.

No doubt entered his mind. The truth, the fact, was a year old--a
long-familiar and dreamy state--but its meaning had not been revealed to
him until just a moment past. Everything had changed when she looked out
with that sweet, steady gaze through the parted veil and then slowly
closed it. She had changed. There was something intangible about her
that last moment, baffling, haunting. He leaned against a crooked old
gate-post that as a boy he had climbed, and the thought came to him that
this spot would all his life be vivid and poignant in his memory. The
first sight of a blue-eyed, sunny-haired girl, a year and more before,
had struck deep into his unconscious heart; a second sight had made her
an unforgettable reality: and a third had been the realization of love.

It was sad, regrettable, incomprehensible, and yet somehow his inner
being swelled and throbbed. Her name was Lenore Anderson. Her father was
one of the richest men in the state of Washington. She had one brother,
Jim, who would not wait for the army draft. Kurt trembled and a hot rush
of tears dimmed his eyes. All at once his lot seemed unbearable. An
immeasurable barrier had arisen between him and his old father--a
hideous thing of blood, of years, of ineradicable difference; the broad
acres of wheatland so dear to him were to be taken from him; love had
overcome him with headlong rush, a love that could never be returned;
and cruelest of all, there was the war calling him to give up his home,
his father, his future, and to go out to kill and to be killed.

It came to him while he leaned there, that, remembering the light of
Lenore Anderson's eyes, he could not give up to bitterness and hatred,
whatever his misfortunes and his fate. She would never be anything to
him, but he and her brother Jim and many other young Americans must be
incalculable all to her. That thought saved Kurt Dorn. There were other
things besides his own career, his happiness; and the way he was placed,
however unfortunate from a selfish point of view, must not breed a
morbid self-pity.

The moment of his resolution brought a flash, a revelation of what he
owed himself. The work and the thought and the feeling of his last few
weeks there at home must be intensified. He must do much and live
greatly in little time. This was the moment of his renunciation, and he
imagine