he young rakes and libertines avoided him, and
there was not a slacker among them who could meet his eye across cafe
or billiard room.

Yet despite the peculiar species of ignominy and disgrace that
Middleville gossips heaped upon Lane's head and the slow, steady
decline of his speaking acquaintance with the elite, there were some
who always greeted him and spoke if he gave them a chance. Helen Wrapp
never failed of a green flashing glance of mockery and enticement. She
smiled, she beckoned, she once called him to her car and asked him to
ride with her, to come to see her. Margaret Maynard rose above dread
of her mother and greeted Lane graciously when occasion offered.
Dorothy Dalrymple and Elinor always evinced such unhesitating
intention of friendship that Lane grew to avoid meeting them. And
twice, when he had come face to face with Mel Iden, her look, her
smile had been such that he had plunged away somewhere, throbbing and
thrilling, to grow blind and sick and numb. It was the failure of his
hopes, and the suffering he endured, and the vain longings she
inspired that heightened his love. She wrote him after the last time
they had passed on the street--a note that stormed Lane's heart. He
did not answer. He divined that his increasing loneliness, and the
sure slow decline of his health, and the heartless intolerance of the
same class that had ostracized her were added burdens to Mel Iden's
faithful heart. He had seen it in her face, read it in her note. And
the time would come, sooner or later, when he could go to her and make
her marry him.

CHAPTER XV.

To be a mystery is overpoweringly sweet to any girl and Bessy Bell was
being that. Her sudden desire for solitude had worried her mother, and
her distant superiority had incited the vexation of her friends. When
they exerted themselves to win Bessy back to her old self she looked
dreamily beyond them and became more aloof. Doctor Bronson, in reply to
Mrs. Bell's appeal to him, looked the young woman over, asked her a few
questions, marveled at the imperious artifice with which she evaded
him, and throwing up his hands said Bessy was beyond him.

The dark fever, rising from the school yards and the playgrounds and
the streets, subtly poisoning the blood of Bessy Bell, slowly lost its
heat and power for the time being. Bessy lived in the full secret
expression of her girlish adoration. She was worshipping a hero; she
was glorifying in her sacrifice; she