y happiness in the proof that he had
reached her shallow heart, and in the fact that this was the moment of
loss.

"Good-bye--Helen," he said.

"Daren--don't--go," she begged.

But he had to go, for other reasons beside the one that this was the
end of all intimate relation between him and Helen. He had overtaxed
his strength, and the burning pang in his breast was one he must heed.
On the hall stairway a dizzy spell came over him. He held on to the
banister until the weakness passed. Fortunately there was no one to
observe him. Somehow the sumptuous spacious hall seemed drearily
empty. Was this a home for that twenty-year-old girl upstairs? Lane
opened the door and went out. He was relieved to find the taxi
waiting. To the driver he gave the address of his home and said: "Go
slow and don't give me a jar!"

But Lane reached home, and got into the house, where he sat at the
table with his mother and Lorna, making a pretense of eating, and went
upstairs and into his bed without any recurrence of the symptoms that
had alarmed him. In the darkness of his room he gradually relaxed to
rest. And rest was the only medicine for him. It had put off hour by
hour and day by day the inevitable.

"If it comes--all right--I'm ready," he whispered to himself. "But in
spite of all I've been through--and have come home to--I don't _want_
to die."

There was no use in trying to sleep. But in this hour he did not want
oblivion. He wanted endless time to think. And slowly, with infinite
care and infallible memory, he went over every detail of what he had
seen and heard since his arrival home. In the headlong stream of
consciousness of the past hours he met with circumstances that he
lingered over, and tried to understand, to no avail. Yet when all lay
clearly before his mental gaze he felt a sad and tremendous
fascination in the spectacle.

For many weeks he had lived on the fancy of getting home, of being
honored and loved, of being given some little meed of praise and
gratitude in the short while he had to live. Alas! this fancy had been
a dream of his egotism. His old world was gone. There was nothing
left. The day of the soldier had passed--until some future need of him
stirred the emotions of a selfish people. This new world moved on
unmindful, through its travail and incalculable change, to unknown
ends. He, Daren Lane, had been left alone on the vast and naked shores
of Lethe.

Lane made not one passionate protest at the