e.

He shaved and put on clean things, and his best coat, and surveyed
himself in the little mirror. He saw a thin face, white as marble, but
he was not ashamed of it. His story was there to read, if any one had
kind enough eyes to see. What would Helen think of him--and Margaret
Maynard--and Dal--and Mel Iden? Bitter curiosity seemed his strongest
feeling concerning his fiancee. He would hold her as engaged to him
until she informed him she was not. As for the others, thought of
them quickened his interest, especially in Mel. What had happened to
her.

It was going to be wonderful to meet them--and to meet everybody he
had once known. Wonderful because he would see what the war had done
to them and they would see what it had done to him. A peculiar
significance lay between his sister and Helen--all these girls, and
the fact of his having gone to war.

"They may not think of it, but _I know_," he muttered to himself. And
he sat down upon his bed to plan how best to meet them, and others. He
did not know what he was going to encounter, but he fortified himself
against calamity. Strange portent of this had crossed the sea to haunt
him. As soon as he was sure of what had happened in Middleville, of
the attitude people would have toward a crippled soldier, and of what
he could do with the month or year that might be left him to live,
then he would know his own mind. All he sensed now was that there had
been some monstrous inexplicable alteration in hope, love, life. His
ordeal of physical strife, loneliness, longing was now over, for he
was back home. But he divined that his greater ordeal lay before him,
here in this little house, and out there in Middleville. All the
subtlety, intelligence, and bitter vision developed by the war
sharpened here to confront him with terrible possibilities. Had his
countrymen, his people, his friends, his sweetheart, all failed him?
Was there justice in Blair Maynard's scorn? Lane's faith cried out in
revolt. He augmented all possible catastrophe, and then could not
believe that he had sacrificed himself in vain. He knew himself. In
him was embodied all the potentiality for hope of the future. And it
was with the front and stride of a soldier, facing the mystery, the
ingratitude, the ignorance and hell of war, that he left his room and
went down stairs to meet the evils in store.

His mother was not in the kitchen. The door stood open. He heard her
outside talking to a neighbor woman, o