allenge, affected him
powerfully, but he had no thrill.

"Aren't you going to kiss me?" she asked.

"Helen, why didn't you write me you had broken our engagement?" he
counter-queried.

The question disconcerted her somewhat. Drawing back from close
contact with him she took hold of his sleeves, and assumed a naive air
of groping in memory. She used her eyes in a way that Lane could not
associate with the past he knew. She was a flirt--not above trying her
arts on the man she had jilted.

"Why, didn't I write you? Of course I did."

"Well, if you did I never got the letter. And if you were on the level
you'd admit you never wrote."

"How'd you find out then?" she inquired curiously.

"I never knew for sure until your mother verified it."

"Are you curious to know why I did break it off?"

"Not in the least."

This reply shot the fire into her face, yet she still persisted in the
expression of her sentimental motive. She began to finger the medal on
his breast.

"So, Mr. Soldier Hero, you didn't care?"

"No--not after I had been here ten minutes," he replied, bluntly.

She whirled from him, swiftly, her body instinct with passion, her
expression one of surprise and fury.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Nothing I care to explain, except I discovered my love for you was
dead--perhaps had been dead for a long time."

"But you never discovered it until you _saw_ me--here--with
Swann--dancing, drinking, smoking?"

"No. To be honest, the shock of that enlightened me."

"Daren Lane, I'm just what _you_ men have made me," she burst out,
passionately.

"You are mistaken. I beg to be excluded from any complicity in the--in
whatever you've been made," he said, bitterly. "I have been true to
you in deed and in thought all this time."

"You must be a queer soldier!" she exclaimed, incredulously.

"I figure there were a couple of million soldiers like me, queer or
not," he retorted.

She gazed at him with something akin to hate in her eyes. Then
putting her hands to her full hips she began that swaying, dancing
walk to and fro before the window. She was deeply hurt. Lane had meant
to get under her skin with a few just words of scorn, and he had
imagined his insinuation as to the change in her had hurt her
feelings. Suddenly he divined it was not that at all--he had only
wounded her vanity.

"Helen, let's not talk of the past," he said. "It's over. Even if you
had been true to me, and I loved you still--I