would have been
compelled to break our engagement."

"You would! And why?"

"I am a physical wreck--and a mental one, too, I fear.... Helen, I've
come home to die."

"Daren!" she cried, poignantly.

Then he told her in brief, brutal words of the wounds and ravages war
had dealt him, and what Doctor Bronson's verdict had been. Lane felt
shame in being so little as to want to shock and hurt her, if that
were possible.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she burst out. "Your mother--your sister.... Oh, that
damned horrible war! _What_ has it not done to us?... Daren, you
looked white and weak, but I never thought you were--going to die....
How dreadful!"

Something of her girlishness returned to her in this moment of
sincerity. The past was not wholly dead. Memories lingered. She looked
at Lane, wide-eyed, in distress, caught between strange long-forgotten
emotions.

"Helen, it's not dreadful to have to die," replied Lane. "_That_ is
not the dreadful part in coming home."

"What _is_ dreadful, then?" she asked, very low.

Lane felt a great heave of his breast--the irrepressible reaction of a
profound and terrible emotion, always held in abeyance until now. And
a fierce pang, that was physical as well as emotional, tore through
him. His throat constricted and ached to a familiar sensation--the
welling up of blood from his lungs. The handkerchief he put to his
lips came away stained red. Helen saw it, and with dilated eyes, moved
instinctively as if to touch him, hold him in her pity.

"Never mind, Helen," he said, huskily. "That's nothing.... Well, I was
about to tell you what is so dreadful--for me.... It's to reach home
grateful to God I was spared to get home--resigned to the ruin of my
life--content to die for whom I fought--my mother, my sister, _you_,
and all our women (for I fought for nothing else)--and find my mother
aged and bewildered and sad, my sister a painted little hussy--and
_you_--a strange creature I despise.... And all, everybody, everything
changed--changed in some horrible way which proves my sacrifice in
vain.... It is not death that is dreadful, but the uselessness, the
hopelessness of the ideal I cherished."

Helen fell on the couch, and burying her face in the pillows she began
to sob. Lane looked down at her, at her glistening auburn hair, and
slender, white, ringed hand clutching the cushions, at her lissom
shaking form, at the shapely legs in the rolled-down silk
stockings--and he felt a melanchol