from every one.

"Daren," said Mrs. Wrapp, as he again turned to her, "if I were in my
daughter's place I'd beg you to take me back. And if you would, I'd
never leave your side for an hour until you were well or--or gone....
But girls now are possessed of some infernal frenzy.... God only knows
how _far_ they go, but I'm one mother who is no fool. I see little
sign of real love in Helen or any of her friends.... And the men who
lounge around after her! Walk upstairs--back to the end of the long
hall--open the door and go in. You'll find Helen and some of her
associates. You'll find the men, young, sleek, soft, well-fed--without
any of the scars or ravages of war. They didn't go to war!... They
_live_ for their bodies. And I hate these slackers. So does Helen's
father. And for three years our house has been a rendezvous for them.
We've prospered, but _that_ has been bitter fruit."

Strong elemental passions Lane had seen and felt in people during the
short twenty-four hours since his return home. All of them had stung
and astounded him, flung into his face the hard brutal facts of the
materialism of the present. Surely it was an abnormal condition. And
yet from the last quarter where he might have expected to find uplift,
and the crystallizing of his attitude toward the world, and the
sharpening of his intelligence--from the hard, grim mother of the girl
who had jilted him, these had come. It was in keeping with all the
other mystery.

"On second thought, I'll go up with you," continued Mrs. Wrapp, as he
moved in the direction she had indicated. "Come."

The wide hall, the winding stairway with its soft carpet, the narrower