Why, mother, she
was only a child. Thirteen years old when I left! She'll miss her
education. I'll send her back."

"Well, son, I doubt if you can make Lorna do anything she doesn't want
to do," returned his mother. "She wanted to quit school--to earn
money. Whatever she was when you left home she's grown up now. You'll
not know her."

"Know Lorna! Why, mother dear, I carried Lorna's picture all through
the war."

"You won't know her," returned Mrs. Lane, positively. "My boy, these
years so short to you have been ages here at home. You will find your
sister--different from the little girl you left. You'll find all the
girls you knew changed--changed. I have given up trying to understand
what's come over the world."

"How--about Helen?" inquired Lane, with strange reluctance and
shyness.

"Helen who?" asked his mother.

"Helen Wrapp, of course," replied Lane, quickly in his surprise. "The
girl I was engaged to when I left."

"Oh!--I had forgotten," she sighed.

"Hasn't Helen been here to see you?"

"Let me see--well, now you tax me--I think she did come once--right
after you left."

"Do you--ever see her?" he asked, with slow heave of breast.

"Yes, now and then, as she rides by in an automobile. But she never
sees me.... Daren, I don't know what your--your--that engagement means
to you, but I must tell you--Helen Wrapp doesn't conduct herself as if
she were engaged. Still, I don't know what's in the heads of girls
to-day. I can only compare the present with the past."

Lane did not inquire further and his mother did not offer more
comment. At the moment he heard a motor car out in front of the house,
a girl's shrill voice in laughter, the slamming of a car-door--then
light, quick footsteps on the porch. Lane could look from where he sat
to the front door--only a few yards down the short hall. The door
opened. A girl entered.

"That's Lorna," said Lane's mother. He grew aware that she bent a
curious gaze upon his face.

Lane rose to his feet with his heart pounding, and a strange sense of
expectancy. His little sister! Never during the endless months of
drudgery, strife and conflict, and agony, had he forgotten Lorna. Not
duty, nor patriotism, had forced him to enlist in the army before the
draft. It had been an ideal which he imagined he shared with the
millions of American boys who entered the service. Too deep ever to be
spoken of! The barbarous and simian Hun, with his black record against
Belgia