an end. No one had dreamed
of his dream. Then the war had come and now his hope, if not his
faith, was dead. Never before had the realization been so galling, so
bitter. Endlessly and eternally he must be concerned with himself. He
had driven that habit of thought away a million times, but it would
return. All he had prayed for was to get home--only to reach home
alive--to see his mother, and his sister Lorna--and Helen--and
then.... But he was here now and all that prayer was falsehood. Just
to get home was not enough.. He had been cheated of career, love,
happiness.

It required extreme effort to cross the little yard, to mount the
porch. In a moment more he would see his mother. He heard her within,
somewhere at the back of the house. Wherefore he tip-toed round to the
kitchen door. Here he paused, quaking. A cold sweat broke out all over
him. Why was this return so dreadful? He pressed a shaking hand over
his heart. How surely he knew he could not deceive his mother! The
moment she saw him, after the first flash of joy, she would see the
wreck of the boy she had let go to war. Lane choked over his emotion,
but he could not spare her. Opening the door he entered.

There she stood at the stove and she looked up at the sound he made.
Yes! but stranger than all other changes was the change in her. She
was not the mother of his boyhood. Nor was the change alone age or
grief or wasted cheek. The moment tore cruelly at Lane's heart. She
did not recognize him swiftly. But when she did....

"Oh God!... Daren! My boy!" she whispered.

"Mother!"

CHAPTER II

His mother divined what he knew. And her embrace was so close, almost
fierce in its tenderness, her voice so broken, that Lane could only
hide his face over her, and shut his eyes, and shudder in an ecstasy.
God alone had omniscience to tell what his soul needed, but something
of it was embodied in home and mother.

That first acute moment past, he released her, and she clung to his
hands, her face upturned, her eyes full of pain and joy, and woman's
searching power, while she broke into almost incoherent speech; and he
responded in feeling, though he caught little of the content of her
words, and scarcely knew what he was saying.

Then he reeled a little and the kitchen dimmed in his sight. Sinking
into a chair and leaning on the table he fought his weakness. He came
close to fainting. But he held on to his sense, aware of his mother
fluttering over hi