"You've done wonders. You've been the life of this work. Some one else can carry it on now. You'd kill yourself. An' this war has cost the Andersons enough."
"Should we count the cost?" she asked.
Anderson had sworn. "No, we shouldn't. But I'm not goin' to lose my girl. Do you get that hunch?… I've bought bonds by the bushel. I've given thousands to your relief societies. I gave up my son Jim—an' that cost us mother.… I'm raisin' a million bushels of wheat this year that the government can have. An' I'm starvin' to death because I don't get what I used to eat.… Then this last blow—Dorn!—that fine young wheat-man, the best—Aw! Lenore…"
"But, dad, is—isn't there any—any hope?"
Anderson was silent.
"Dad," she had pleaded, "if he were really dead—buried—oh! wouldn't I feel it?"
"You've overworked yourself. Now you've got to rest," her father had replied, huskily.
"But, dad …"
"I said no.… I've a heap of pride in what you've done. An' I sure think you're the best Anderson of the lot. That's all. Now kiss me an' go to bed."
That explained how Lenore came to be alone, high up' on the vast wheat-slope, watching and feeling, with no more work to do. The slow climb there had proved to her how much she needed rest. But work even under strain or pain would have been preferable to endless hours to think, to remember, to fight despair.