ow what
we did there together.... Now we're on this ship--getting into port of
the good old U.S.--good as bad as she is!--going home together. Thank
God for that. I want to be buried in Woodlawn.... Home! Home?... We
feel its meaning. But, Dare, we'll have no home--no place.... We are
old--we are through--we have served--we are done.... What we dreamed
of as glory will be cold ashes to our lips, bitter as gall.... You
always were a dreamer, an idealist, a believer in God, truth, hope and
womanhood. In spite of the war these somehow survive in you.... But
Dare, old friend, steel yourself now against disappointment and
disillusion."

Used as Lane was to his comrade's outbursts, this one struck
singularly home to Lane's heart and made him mute. The chill of his
earlier misgiving returned, augmented by a strange uneasiness, a
premonition of the unknown and dreadful future. But he threw it off.
Faith would not die in Lane. It could not die utterly because of what
he felt in himself. Yet--what was in store for him? Why was his hope
so unquenchable? There could be no _resurgam_ for Daren Lane.
Resignation should have brought him peace--peace--when every nerve in
his shell-shocked body racked him--when he could not subdue a mounting
hope that all would be well at home--when he quivered at thought of
mother, sister, sweetheart!

The ship glided on under the shadow of America's emblem--a bronze
woman of noble proportions, holding out a light to ships that came in
the night--a welcome to all the world. Daren Lane held to his maimed
comrade while they stood bare-headed and erect for that moment when
the, ship passed the statue. Lane knew what Blair felt. But nothing of
what that feeling was could ever be spoken. The deck of the ship was
now crowded with passengers, yet they were seemingly dead to anything
more than a safe arrival at their destination. They were not crippled
American soldiers. Except these two there were none in service
uniforms. There across the windy space of water loomed the many-eyed
buildings, suggestive of the great city. A low roar of traffic came on
the breeze. Passengers and crew of the liner were glad to dock before
dark. They took no notice of the rigid, erect soldiers. Lane, arm in
arm with Blair, face to the front, stood absorbed in his sense of a
nameless sublimity for them while passing the Statue of Liberty. The
spirit of the first man who ever breathed of freedom for the human
race burned as a wh