“No, Daren, I’ve left home,” she said, with slow change, as if his words recalled something she had forgotten.  All the radiance vanished, leaving her singularly white.

“Left home!  What for?” he asked, bluntly.

“Father turned me out,” she replied, with face averted.  The soft roundness of her throat swelled.  Lane saw her full breast heave under her coat.

“What’re you saying, Mel Iden?” he demanded, as quickly as he could find his voice.

Then she turned bravely to meet his gaze, and Lane had never seen as sad eyes as looked into his.

“Daren, haven’t you heard—­about me?” she asked, with tremulous lips.

“No.  What’s wrong?”

“I—­I can’t let you call on me.”

“Why not?  Are you married—­jealous husband?”

“No, I’m not married—­but I—­I have a baby,” she whispered.

“Mel!” gasped Lane.  “A war baby?”

“Yes.”

Lane was so shocked he could not collect his scattered wits, let alone think of the right thing to say, if there were any right thing.  “Mel, this is a—­a terrible surprise.  Oh, I’m sorry....  How the war played hell with all of us!  But for you—­Mel Iden—­I can’t believe it.”

“Daren, so terribly true,” she said.  “Don’t I look it?”

“Mel, you look—­oh—­heartbroken.”

“Yes, I am broken-hearted,” she replied, and drooped her head.

“Forgive me, Mel.  I hardly know what I’m saying....  But listen—­I’m coming to see you.”

“No,” she said.

That trenchant word was thought-provoking.  A glimmer of understanding began to dawn in Lane.  Already an immense pity had flooded his soul, and a profound sense of the mystery and tragedy of Mel Iden.  She had always been unusual, aloof, proud, unattainable, a girl with a heart of golden fire.  And now she had a nameless child and was an outcast from her father’s house.  The fact, the fatality of it, stunned Lane.

“Daren, I must go in to see Dr. Bronson,” she said.  “I’m glad you’re home.  I’m proud of you.  I’m happy for your mother and Lorna.  You must watch Lorna—­try to restrain her.  She’s going wrong.  All the young girls are going wrong.  Oh, it’s a more dreadful time now than before or during the war.  The let-down has been terrible....  Good-bye, Daren.”

In other days Manton’s building on Main Street had appeared a pretentious one to Lane’s untraveled eyes.  It was an old three-story red-brick-front edifice, squatted between higher and more modern structures.  When he climbed the dirty dark stairway up to the second floor a throng of memories returned with the sensations of creaky steps, musty smell, and dim light.  When he pushed open a door on which MANTON & CO. showed in black letters he caught his breath.  Long—­long past!  Was it possible that he had been penned up for three years in this stifling place?