Mel answered his knock, and sight of her face seemed to lift his heart with an unwonted throb.  Had he unconsciously needed that?  The thought made his greeting, and the tender of the violets, awkward for him.

“Violets!  Oh, and spring!  Daren, it was good of you to gather them for me.  I remember....  But I told you not to come again.”

“Yes, I know you did,” he replied.  “But I’ve disobeyed you.  I wanted to see you, Mel....  I didn’t know how badly until I got here.”

“You should not want to see me at all.  People will talk.”

“So you care what people say of you?” he questioned, feigning surprise.

“Of me?  No.  I was thinking of you.”

“You fear the poison tongues for me?  Well, they cannot harm me.  I’m beyond tongues or minds like those.”

She regarded him earnestly, with serious gravity and slowly dawning apprehension; then, turning to arrange the violets in a tiny vase, she shook her head.

“Daren, you’re beyond me, too.  I feel a—­a change in you.  Have you had another sick spell?”

“Only for a day off and on.  I’m really pretty well to-day.  But I have changed.  I feel that, yet I don’t know how.”

Lane could talk to her.  She stirred him, drew him out of himself.  He felt a strange desire for her sympathy, and a keen curiosity concerning her opinions.

“I thought maybe you’d been ill again or perhaps upset by the consequences of your—­your action at Fanchon Smith’s party.”

“Who told you of that?” he asked in surprise.

“Dal.  She was here yesterday.  She will come in spite of me.”

“So will I,” interposed Lane.

She shook her head.  “No, it’s different for a man....  I’ve missed the girls.  No one but Dal ever comes.  I thought Margie would be true to me—­no matter what had befallen....  Dal comes, and oh, Daren, she is good.  She helps me so....  She told me what you did at Fanchon’s party.”

“She did!  Well, what’s your verdict?” he queried, grimly.  “That break queered me in Middleville.”

“I agree with what Doctor Wallace said to his congregation,” returned Mel.

As Lane met the blue fire of her eyes he experienced another singularly deep and profound thrill, as if the very depths of him had been stirred.  He seemed to have suddenly discovered Mel Iden.

“Doctor Wallace did back me up,” said Lane, with a smile.  “But no one else did.”

“Don’t be so sure of that.  Harsh conditions require harsh measures.  Dal said you killed the camel-walk dance in Middleville.”

“It surely was a disgusting sight,” returned Lane, with a grimace.  “Mel, I just saw red that night.”

“Daren,” she asked wistfully, following her own train of thought, “do you know that most of the girls consider me an outcast?  Fanchon rides past me with her head up in the air.  Helen Wrapp cuts me.  Margie looks to see if her mother is watching when she bows to me.  Isn’t it strange, Daren, how things turn out?  Maybe my old friends are right.  But I don’t feel that I am what they think I am....  I would do what I did—­over and over.”