A maid answered his ring.  Lane asked for both Mrs. Wrapp and Helen.  They were at home, the maid informed him, and ushered Lane into a gray and silver reception room.  Lane had no card, but gave his name.  As he gazed around the room he tried to fit the delicate decorative scheme to Mrs. Wrapp.  He smiled at the idea.  But he remembered that she had always liked him in spite of the fact that she did not favor his attention to Helen.  Like many mothers of girls, she wanted a rich marriage for her daughter.  Manifestly now she had money.  But had happiness come with prosperity?

Then Mrs. Wrapp came down.  Rising, he turned to see a large woman, elaborately gowned.  She had a heavy, rather good-natured face on which was a smile of greeting.

“Daren Lane!” she exclaimed, with fervor, and to his surprise, she kissed him.  There was no doubt of her pleasure.  Lane’s thin armor melted.  He had not anticipated such welcome.  “Oh, I’m glad to see you, soldier boy.  But you’re a man now.  Daren, you’re white and thin.  Handsomer, though!...  Sit down and talk to me a little.”

Her kindness made his task easy.

“I’ve called to pay my respects to you—­and to see Helen,” he said.

“Of course.  But talk to me first,” she returned, with a smile.  “You’ll find me better company than that crowd upstairs.  Tell me about yourself....  Oh, I know soldiers hate to talk about themselves and the war.  Never mind the war.  Are you well?  Did you get hurt?  You look so—­so frail, Daren.”

There was something simple and motherly about her, that became her, and warmed Lane’s cold heart.  He remembered that she had always preferred boys to girls, and regretted she had not been the mother of boys.  So Lane talked to her, glad to find that the most ordinary news of the service and his comrades interested her very much.  The instant she espied his Croix de Guerre he seemed lifted higher in her estimation.  Yet she had the delicacy not to question him about that.  In fact, after ten minutes with her, Lane had to reproach himself for the hostility with which he had come.  At length she rose with evident reluctance.

“You want to see Helen.  Shall I send her down here or will you go up to her studio?”

“I think I’d like to go up,” replied Lane.

“If I were you, I would,” advised Mrs. Wrapp.  “I’d like your opinion—­of, well, what you’ll see.  Since you left home, Daren, we’ve been turned topsy-turvy.  I’m old-fashioned.  I can’t get used to these goings-on.  These young people ‘get my goat,’ as Helen expresses it.”

“I’m hopelessly behind the times, I’ve seen that already,” rejoined Lane.

“Daren, I respect you for it.  There was a time when I objected to your courting Helen.  But I couldn’t see into the future.  I’m sorry now she broke her engagement to you.”

“I—­thank you, Mrs. Wrapp,” said Lane, with agitation.  “But of course Helen was right.  She was too young....  And even if she had been—­been true to me—­I would have freed her upon my return.”