“I beg your——” he began, and stopped. He knew this girl, but the strained tragic shadow of her eyes was strikingly unfamiliar. The transparent white skin let the blue tracery of veins show. On the instant her lips trembled and parted.
“Oh, Daren—don't you know me?” she asked.
“Mel Iden!” he burst out. “Know you? I should smile I do. But it—it was so sudden. And you're older—different somehow. Mel, you're sweeter—why you're beautiful.”
He clasped her hands and held on to them, until he felt her rather nervously trying to withdraw them.
“Oh, Daren, I'm glad to see you home—alive—whole,” she said, almost in a whisper. “Are you—well?”
“No, Mel. I'm in pretty bad shape,” he replied. “Lucky to get home alive—to see you all.”
“I'm sorry. You're so white. You're wonderfully changed, Daren.”
“So are you. But I'll say I'm happy it's not painted face and plucked eyebrows.... Mel, what's happened to you?”
She suddenly espied the decoration on his coat. The blood rose and stained her clear cheek. With a gesture of exquisite grace and sensibility that thrilled Lane she touched the medal. “Oh! TheCroix de Guerre .... Daren, you were a hero.”
“No, Mel, just a soldier.”
She looked up into his face with eyes that fascinated Lane, so beautiful were they—the blue of corn-flowers—and lighted then with strange rapt glow.
“Just a soldier!” she murmured. But Lane heard in that all the sweetness and understanding possible for any woman's heart. She amazed him—held him spellbound. Here was the sympathy—and something else—a nameless need—for which he yearned. The moment was fraught with incomprehensible forces. Lane's sore heart responded to her rapt look, to the sudden strange passion of her pale face. Swiftly he divined that Mel Iden gloried in the presence of a maimed and proven soldier.
“Mel, I'll come to see you,” he said, breaking the spell. “Do you still live out on the Hill road? I remember the four big white oaks.”
“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 timenow 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?
Manton carried on various lines of business, and for Middleville, he was held to be something of a merchant and broker. Lane was wholly familiar with the halls, the several lettered doors, the large unpartitioned office at the back of the building. Here his slow progress was intercepted by a slip of a girl who asked him what he wanted. Before answering, Lane took stock of the girl. She might have been all of fifteen—no older. She had curly bobbed hair, and a face that would have been comely but for the powder and rouge. She was chewing gum, and she ogled Lane.
“I want to see Mr. Manton,” Lane said.
“What name, please.”
“Daren Lane.”
She tripped off toward the door leading to Manton's private offices, and Lane's gaze, curiously following her, found her costume to be startling even to his expectant eyes. Then she disappeared. Lane's gaze sought the corner and desk that once upon a time had been his. A blond young lady, also with bobbed hair, was operating a typewriter at his desk. She glanced up, and espying Lane, she suddenly stopped her work. She recognized him. But, if she were Hattie Wilson, it was certain that Lane did not recognize her. Then the office girl returned.
“Step this way, please. Mr. Smith will see you.”
How singularly it struck Lane that not once in three years had he thought of Smith. But when he saw him, the intervening months were as nothing. Lean, spare, pallid, with baggy eyes, and the nose of a drinker, Smith had not changed.
“How do, Lane. So you're back? Welcome to our city,” he said, extending a nerveless hand that felt to Lane like a dead fish.
“Hello, Mr. Smith. Yes, I'm back,” returned Lane, taking the chair Smith indicated. And then he met the inevitable questions as best he could in order not to appear curt or uncivil.
“I'd like to see Mr. Manton to ask for my old job,” interposed Lane, presently.
“He's busy now, Lane, but maybe he'll see you. I'll find out.”
Smith got up and went out. Lane sat there with a vague sense of absurdity in the situation. The click of a typewriter sounded from behind him. He wanted to hurry out. He wanted to think of other things, and twice he drove away memory of the girl he had just left at Doctor Bronson's office. Presently Smith returned, slipping along in his shiny black suit, flat-footed and slightly bowed, with his set dull expression.