They sat down to supper, and Lane, sick, dazed, weak, found eating his first meal at home as different as everything else from what he had expected.  There had been no lack of warmth or love in Lorna’s welcome, but he suffered disappointment.  Again for the hundredth time he put it aside and blamed his morbid condition.  Nothing must inhibit his gladness.

Lorna gave Lane no chance to question her.  She was eager, voluble, curious, and most disconcertingly oblivious of a possible sensitiveness in Lane.

“Dare, you look like a dead one,” she said.  “Did you get shot, bayoneted, gassed, shell-shocked and all the rest?  Did you go over the top?  Did you kill any Germans?  Gee! did you get to ride in a war-plane?  Come across, now, and tell me.”

“I guess about—­everything happened to me—­except going west,” returned Lane.  “But I don’t want to talk about that.  I’m too glad to be home.”

“What’s that on your breast?” she queried, suddenly, pointing at the Croix de Guerre he wore.

“That?  Lorna, that’s my medal.”

“Gee!  Let me see.”  She got up and came round to peer down closely, to finger the decoration.  “French!  I never saw one before....  Daren, haven’t you an American medal too?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“My dear sister, that’s hard to say.  Because I didn’t deserve it, most likely.”

She leaned back to gaze more thoughtfully at him.

“What did you get this for?”

“It’s a long story.  Some day I’ll tell you.”

“Are you proud of it?”

For answer he only smiled at her.

“It’s so long since the war I’ve forgotten so many things,” she said, wonderingly.  Then she smiled sweetly.  “Dare, I’m proud of you.”

That was a moment in which his former emotion seemed to stir for her.  Evidently she had lost track of something once memorable.  She was groping back for childish impressions.  It was the only indication of softness he had felt in her.  How impossible to believe Lorna was only fifteen!  He could form no permanent conception of her.  But in that moment he sensed something akin to a sister’s sympathy, some vague and indefinable thought in her, too big for her to grasp.  He never felt it again.  The serious sweet mood vanished.

“Hot dog!  I’ve a brother with the Croix de Guerre.  I’ll swell up over that.  I’ll crow over some of these Janes.”

Thus she talked on while eating her supper.  And Lane tried to eat while he watched her.  Presently he moved his chair near to the stove.  Lorna did not wait upon her mother.  It was the mother who did the waiting, as silently she moved from table to stove.