tairs--back to the end of the long
hall--open the door and go in. You'll find Helen and some of her
associates. You'll find the men, young, sleek, soft, well-fed--without
any of the scars or ravages of war. They didn't go to war!... They
_live_ for their bodies. And I hate these slackers. So does Helen's
father. And for three years our house has been a rendezvous for them.
We've prospered, but _that_ has been bitter fruit."

Strong elemental passions Lane had seen and felt in people during the
short twenty-four hours since his return home. All of them had stung
and astounded him, flung into his face the hard brutal facts of the
materialism of the present. Surely it was an abnormal condition. And
yet from the last quarter where he might have expected to find uplift,
and the crystallizing of his attitude toward the world, and the
sharpening of his intelligence--from the hard, grim mother of the girl
who had jilted him, these had come. It was in keeping with all the
other mystery.

"On second thought, I'll go up with you," continued Mrs. Wrapp, as he
moved in the direction she had indicated. "Come."

The wide hall, the winding stairway with its soft carpet, the narrower
hallway above--these made a long journey for Lane. But at the end,
when Mrs. Wrapp stopped with hand on the farthest door, Lane felt knit
like cold steel.

The discordant music and the soft shuffling of feet ceased. Laughter
and murmur of voices began.

"Come, Daren," whispered Mrs. Wrapp, as if thrilled. Certainly her
eyes gleamed. Then quickly she threw the door open wide and called
out:

"Helen, here's Daren Lane home from the war, wearing the _Croix de
Guerre_."

Mrs. Wrapp pushed Lane forward, and stood there a moment in the sudden
silence, then stepping back, she went out and closed the door.

Lane saw a large well-lighted room, with colorful bizarre decorations
and a bare shiny floor. The first person his glance encountered was a
young girl, strikingly beautiful, facing him with red lips parted. She
had violet eyes that seemed to have a startled expression as they met
Lane's. Next Lane saw a slim young man standing close to this girl, in
the act of withdrawing his arm from around her waist. Apparently with
his free hand he had either been lowering a smoking cigarette from her
lips or had been raising it there. This hand, too, dropped down. Lane
did not recognize the fellow's smooth, smug face, with its tiny curled
mustache and its heated s