“Where are you going to-night?” he asked, sitting down to the table.

“To the armory—­basketball game—­and dance afterward.”

“With whom?”

“With Harry.  I suppose that pleases you, big brother?”

“Yes, it does.  I like him.  I wish he’d take you out oftener.”

“Take me!  Hot dog!  He’d kill himself to take me all the time.  But Harry’s slow.  He bores me.  Then he hasn’t got a car.”

“Lorna, you may as well know now that I’m going to stop your car rides,” said Lane, losing his patience.

“You are not,” she retorted, and in the glint of the eyes meeting his, Lane saw his defeat.  His patience was exhausted, his fear almost verified.  He did not mince words.  With his mother standing open-mouthed and shocked, Lane gave his sister to understand what he thought of automobile rides, and that as far as she was concerned they had to be stopped.  If she would not stop them out of respect to her mother and to him, then he would resort to other measures.  Lorna bounced up in a fury, and in the sharp quarrel that followed, Lane realized he was dealing with flint full of fire.  Lorna left without finishing her supper.

“Daren, that’s not the way,” said his mother, shaking her head.

“What is the way, mother?” he asked, throwing up his hands.

“I don’t know, unless it’s to see her way,” responded the mother.  “Sometimes I feel so—­so old-fashioned and ignorant before Lorna.  Maybe she is right.  How can we tell?  What makes all the young girls like that?”

What indeed, wondered Lane!  The question had been hammering at his mind for over a month.  He went back to bed, weary and dejected, suffering spasms of pain, like blades, through his lungs, and grateful for the darkness.  Almost he wished it was all over—­this ordeal.  How puny his efforts!  Relentlessly life marched on.  At midnight he was still fighting his pangs, still unconquered.  In the night his dark room was not empty.  There were faces, shadows, moving images and pictures, scenes of the war limned against the blackness.  At last he rested, grew as free from pain as he ever grew, and slept.  In the morning it was another day, and the past was as if it were not.

May the first dawned ideally springlike, warm, fresh, fragrant, with birds singing, sky a clear blue, and trees budding green and white.

Lane yielded to an impulse that had grown stronger of late.  His steps drew him to the little drab house where Mel Iden lived with her aunt.  On the way, which led past a hedge, Lane gathered a bunch of violets.

“’In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love,’” he mused.  “It’s good, even for me, to be alive this morning....  These violets, the birds, the fresh smells, the bursting green!  Oh, well, regrets are idle.  But just to think—­I had to go through all I’ve known—­right down to this moment—­to realize how stingingly sweet life is....”