Why not go out and deliberately kill a man, a libertine, a slacker?
He would still be acting on the same principle that imbued him during the war.
His thoughts drifted to Mel Iden.

Strange how he loved her! Why?
Because she was a lonely soul like himself--because she was true to her womanhood--because she had fallen for the same principle for which he had sacrificed all--because she had been abandoned by family and friends--because she had become beautiful, strange, mystic, tragic.
Because despite the unnamed child, the scarlet letter upon her breast, she seemed to him infinitely purer than the girl who had jilted him.
Lane now surrendered to the enchantment of emotion embodied in the very name of Mel Iden.

He had long resisted a sweet, melancholy current.

He had driven Mel from his mind by bitter reflection on the conduct of the people who had ostracized her.

Thought of her now, of what he meant to do, of the mounting love he had so strangely come to feel for her, was his only source of happiness.