seemed a mockery.




CHAPTER III


Lane saw the casement of his window grow gray with the glimmering
light of dawn. After that he slept several hours. When he awoke it was
nine o'clock. The long night with its morbid dreams and thoughts had
passed, and in the sunshine of day he saw things differently.

To move, to get up was not an easy task. It took stern will, and all
the strength of muscle he had left, and when he finally achieved it
there was a clammy dew of pain upon his face. With slow guarded
movements he began to dress himself. Any sudden or violent action
might burst the delicate gassed spots in his lungs or throw out of
place one of the lower vertebrae of his spine. The former meant death,
and the latter bent his body like a letter S and caused such
excruciating agony that it was worse than death. These were his two
ever-present perils. The other aches and pains he could endure.

He shaved and put on clean things, and his best coat, and surveyed
himself in the little mirror. He saw a thin face, white as marble, but
he was not ashamed of it. His story was there to read, if any one had
kind enough eyes to see. What would Helen think of him--and Margaret
Maynard--and Dal--and Mel Iden? Bitter curiosity seemed his strongest
feeling concerning his fiancee. He would hold her as engaged to him
until she informed him she was not. As for the others, thought of