And I'll say it's the money people want these days." The materialism so pregnant in Lorna's half bitter reply checked Lane's further questioning.

He edged closer to the stove, feeling a little cold.

A shadow drifted across the warmth and glow of his mind.
At home now he was to be confronted with a monstrous and insupportable truth--the craven cowardice of the man who had been eligible to service in army or navy, and who had evaded it.

In camp and trench and dug-out he had heard of the army of slackers.

And of all the vile and stark profanity which the war gave birth to on the lips of miserable and maimed soldiers, that flung on the slackers was the worst.
"I've got a date to go to the movies," said Lorna, and she bounced out of the kitchen into the hall singing: "Oh by heck You never saw a wreck Like the wreck she made of me." She went upstairs, while Lane sat there trying to adapt himself to a new and unintelligible environment.