It was a reply that surprised Lane.

“I’m out of date, you know.”

She put a finger on the medal on his breast and said:  “You could never be out of date.”

The music and the sliding shuffle ceased.

“Now beat it,” said Helen.  “I want to talk to Daren.”  She gayly shoved the young people ahead of her in a mass, and called to Bessy:  “Here, you kid vamp, lay off Daren.”

Bessy leaned to whisper in his ear:  “Make a date with me, quick!”

“Surely, I’ll hunt you up.  Good-bye.”

She was the only one who made any pretension of saying good-bye to Lane.  They all crowded out before Helen, with Mackay in the rear.  From the hall Lane heard him say to Helen:  “Dick’ll sure go to the mat with you for this.”

Presently Helen returned to shut the door behind her; and her walk toward Lane had a suggestion of the oriental dancer.  For Lane her face was a study.  This seemed a woman beyond his comprehension.  She was the Helen Wrapp he had known and loved, plus an age of change, a measureless experience.  With that swaying, sinuous, pantherish grace, with her green eyes narrowed and gleaming, half mocking, half serious, she glided up to him, close, closer until she pressed against him, and her face was uplifted under his.  Then she waited with her eyes gazing into his.  Slumberous green depths, slowly lighting, they seemed to Lane.  Her presence thus, her brazen challenge, affected him powerfully, but he had no thrill.

“Aren’t you going to kiss me?” she asked.

“Helen, why didn’t you write me you had broken our engagement?” he counter-queried.

The question disconcerted her somewhat.  Drawing back from close contact with him she took hold of his sleeves, and assumed a naive air of groping in memory.  She used her eyes in a way that Lane could not associate with the past he knew.  She was a flirt—­not above trying her arts on the man she had jilted.

“Why, didn’t I write you?  Of course I did.”

“Well, if you did I never got the letter.  And if you were on the level you’d admit you never wrote.”

“How’d you find out then?” she inquired curiously.

“I never knew for sure until your mother verified it.”

“Are you curious to know why I did break it off?”

“Not in the least.”

This reply shot the fire into her face, yet she still persisted in the expression of her sentimental motive.  She began to finger the medal on his breast.

“So, Mr. Soldier Hero, you didn’t care?”

“No—­not after I had been here ten minutes,” he replied, bluntly.

She whirled from him, swiftly, her body instinct with passion, her expression one of surprise and fury.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Nothing I care to explain, except I discovered my love for you was dead—­perhaps had been dead for a long time.”

“But you never discovered it until you saw me—­here—­with Swann—­dancing, drinking, smoking?”