t, of course it is impossible."

She disengaged her hands, and, turning away, looked out of the window.
Lane rather weakly sat down. What had come over him? His blood seemed
bursting in his veins. Then he gazed round the dingy little parlor and
at this girl of twenty, whose beauty did not harmonize with her
surroundings. Fair-haired, white-faced, violet-eyed, she emanated
tragedy. He watched her profile, clear cut as a cameo, fine brow,
straight nose, sensitive lips, strong chin. She was biting those
tremulous lips. And when she turned again to him they were red. The
short-bowed upper lip, full and sweet, the lower, with its sensitive
droop at the corner, eloquent of sorrow--all at once Lane realized he
wanted to kiss that mouth more than he had ever wanted anything. The
moment was sudden and terrible, for it meant love--love such as he had
never known.

"Daren," she said, turning, "tell me how you got the _Croix de
Guerre_."

By the look of her and the hand that moved toward his breast, Lane
felt his power over her. He began his story and it was as if he heard
some one else talking. When he had finished, she asked, "The French
Army honored you, why not the American?"

"It was never reported."

"How strange! Who was your officer?"

"You'll laugh when you hear," he replied, without hint of laugh
himself. "Heavens, how things come about! My officer was from
Middleville."

"Daren! Who?" she asked, quickly, her eyes darkening with thought.

"Captain Vane Thesel."

How singular to Lane the fact she did not laugh! She only stared. Then
it seemed part of her warmth and glow, her subtle response to his
emotion, slowly receded. He felt what he could not see.

"Oh! He. Vane Thesel," she said, without wonder or surprise or
displeasure, or any expression Lane anticipated.

Her strange detachment stirred a hideous thought--could Thesel have
been.... But Lane killed the culmination of that thought. Not,
however, before dark, fiery jealousy touched him with fangs new to his
endurance.

To drive it away, Lane launched into more narrative of the war. And as
he talked he gradually forgot himself. It might be hateful to rake up
the burning threads of memory for the curious and the soulless, but to
tell Mel Iden it was a keen, strange delight. He watched the changes
of her expression. He learned to bring out the horror, sadness, glory
that abided in her heart. And at last he cut himself off abruptly:
"But I must save somet