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Updated: September 20, 2025
He wept for his mother, aged and bowed by trouble, bewildered, ready to give up the struggle his little sister now forced into erotic girlhood, blind, wilful, bold, on the wrong path, doomed beyond his power or any earthly power the men he had met, warped by the war, materialistic, lost in the maze of self-preservation and self-aggrandizement, dead to chivalry and the honor of women Mel Iden, strangest and saddest of mysteries a girl who had been noble, aloof, proud, with a heart of golden fire, now disgraced, ruined, the mother of a war-baby, and yet, strangest of all, not vile, not bad, not lost, but groping like he was down those vast and naked shores of life.
Whatever had been the facts of her downfall and reflection on that hurt Lane so strangely he could not bear it it had not been on her part a matter of sex. She was far above wantonness. Through long hours in the dark of night, when Lane's pain kept him sleepless, he had pondered over the mystery of Mel Iden until it cleared. She typified the mother of the race.
She hurried after Clarence into the hall, gave one look, uttered one shriek of horror, and fainted. Iden. But thou wilt brave me in these saucy terms. Cade. Brave thee I ay, by the best blood that ever was broached, and beard thee too. "You see, my lord," said Mr.
Maynard, bewildered by the revolt of this once meek daughter. "Maybe I'm learning a little sense. Maybe I got some of it from Daren Lane," flashed back Margaret. "Mother, whatever I've learned lately has been learned away from home. You've no more idea what's going on in the world to-day than if you were actually dead. I never was bright like Mel Iden, but I'm no fool. I see and hear and I read.
The next day Lane, having ascertained where Joshua Iden was employed, betook himself that way just at the noon hour. Iden, like so many other Middleville citizens, gained a livelihood by working for the rich Swann. In his best days he had been a master mechanic of the railroad shops; at sixty he was foreman of one of the steel mills.
The damned Huns cut me to pieces.... Not much like I was when I used to call on Mel!" Iden lowered his shadowed face. After a moment he said: "No, you're changed, Lane.... I heard you were gassed, too." "Oh, everything came my way, Mr. Iden.... And the finish isn't far off." Iden shifted his legs uneasily, then sat more erect, and for the first time really looked at Lane.
"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.
"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.
The world became a place of strife. What then, reflected Lane, could have been the effect of war upon women? The mothers of the race, of men! The creatures whom emotions governed! The beings who had the sex of tigresses! "The female of the species!" What had the war done to the generation of its period to Helen, to Mel Iden, to Lorna, to Bessy Bell? Had it made them what men wanted?
She met her friends away from the house, and returning at night she walked the last few blocks. It was this fact that awoke Lane's serious suspicions. Another problem lay upon Lane's heart; if not so distressing as Lorna's, still one that added to his sorrow and his perplexity. He had gone once to call on Mel Iden. Mel Iden was all soul.
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