n mute eloquence.

"He was all shot up. He can't live," hurried Anderson, hoarsely. "But
he's alive--he'll live to see you."

"Oh! I knew, I _knew!_" whispered Lenore clasping her hands. "Oh, thank
God!"

"Lenore, steady now. You're gettin' shaky. Brace there, my girl!...
Dorn's alive. I've brought him home. He's here."

"_Here!_" screamed Lenore.

"Yes. They'll have him here in half an hour."

Lenore fell into her father's arms, blind and deaf to all outward
things. The light of day failed. But her consciousness did not fade.
Before it seemed a glorious radiance that was the truth lost for the
moment, blindly groping, in whirling darkness. When she did feel herself
again it was as a weak, dizzy, palpitating child, unable to stand. Her
father, in alarm, and probable anger with himself, was coaxing and
swearing in one breath. Then suddenly the joy that had shocked Lenore
almost into collapse forced out the weakness with amazing strength. She
blazed. She radiated. She burst into utterance too swift to understand.

"Hold on there, girl!" interrupted Anderson. "You've got the bit in your
teeth.... Listen, will you? Let me talk. Well--well, there now.... Sure,
it's all right, Lenore. You made me break it sudden-like.... Listen.
There's all summer to talk. Just now you want to get a few details. Get
'em straight.... Dorn is on the way here. They put his stretcher--we've
been packin' him on one--into a motor-truck. There's a nurse come with
me--a man nurse. We'd better put Dorn in mother's room. That's the
biggest an' airiest. You hurry an' open up the windows an' fix the
bed.... An' don't go out of your head with joy. It's sure more 'n we
ever hoped for to see him alive, to get him home. But he's done for,
poor boy! He can't live.... An' he's in such shape that I don't want you
to see him when they fetch him in. Savvy, girl! You'll stay in your room
till we call you. An' now rustle."

* * * * *

Lenore paced and crouched and lay in her room, waiting, listening with
an intensity that hurt. When a slow procession of men, low-voiced and
soft-footed, carried Kurt Dorn into the house and up-stairs Lenore
trembled with a storm of emotion. All her former agitation, love, agony,
and suspense, compared to what she felt then, was as nothing. Not the
joy of his being alive, not the terror of his expected death, had so
charged her heart as did this awful curiosity to see him, to realize
him.

A