as or
where he lived.

In the very first place, he had been unforgettable for two
reasons--because he had been so struck at sight of her that he had gazed
unconsciously, with a glow on his face and a radiance in his eye, as of
a young poet spellbound at an inspiration; and because he seemed the
physical type of young man she had idealized--a strong, lithe-limbed,
blond giant, with a handsome, frank face, clear-cut and smooth,
ruddy-cheeked and blue-eyed.

Only after meeting him out there in the desert of wheat had she felt
sympathy for him. And now with intelligence and a woman's intuition,
barring the old, insidious, dreamy mood, Lenore went over in retrospect
all she could remember of that meeting. And the truth made her sharply
catch her breath. Dorn had fallen in love with her. Intuition declared
that, while her intelligence repudiated it. Stranger than all was the
thrill which began somewhere in the unknown depths of her and mounted,
to leave her tingling all over. She had told her father that she did not
want to ride to the Bend country. But she did want to go! And that
thought, flashing up, would not be denied. To want to meet a strange
young man again was absolutely a new and irritating discovery for
Lenore. It mystified her, because she had not had time to like Dorn.
Liking an acquaintance had nothing to do with the fact. And that stunned
her.

"Could it be--love at first sight?" she whispered, incredulously, as she
stared out over the shadowing fields.

"For me? Why, how absurd--impossible!... I--I only remembered him--a big
handsome boy with blazing eyes.... And now I'm sorry for him!"

To whisper her amaze and doubt and consternation only augmented the
instinctive recurring emotion. She felt something she could not explain.
And that something was scarcely owing to this young man's pitiful
position between duty to his father and love for his country. It had to
do with his blazing eyes; intangible, dreamlike perceptions of him as
not real, of vague sweet fancies that retreated before her introspective
questioning. What alarmed Lenore was a tendency of her mind to shirk
this revealing analysis. Never before had she been afraid to look into
herself. But now she was finding unplumbed wells of feeling, secret
chambers of dreams into which she had never let the light, strange
instinctive activities, more physical than mental. When in her life
before had she experienced a nameless palpitation of her heart?