“I can’t let you go,” Bob said, finally.

“Good!  We’ll keep this apartment and I’ll go on working—­”

He hid his face in his hands and groaned.  “Gee!  I’m a rotter.”

“You can sell your belongings at the Charlevoix, and we’ll use the money.  We’ll need everything, for I can’t piece out my salary the way I’ve been doing.  There can’t be any more supper-parties and gifts—­”

“I should hope not,” he growled.  “I’ll murder the first man who speaks to you.”

“Then is it a real, binding bargain?”

“It is—­if you’ll bind it with another kiss,” he agreed, with a miserable attempt at cheerfulness.  “But I sha’n’t look myself in the face.”

For the first time she came to him willingly.

“Doesn’t it seem nice to be honest with yourself and the world?” she sighed, after a time.

“Yes,” he laughed.  “I’m sorry to cut the governor adrift, but he’ll have to get along without our help.”

Despite his jocularity he was deeply moved.  As the situation grew clearer to him he saw that this girl was about to change the whole current of his careless life; her unexpected firmness, her gentle, womanly determination at this crisis was very grateful—­he desperately longed to retain its support—­and yet the arrangement to which she had forced his consent went sorely against his grain.  His struggle had not been easy.  Her surrender to him was as complete and as unselfish as his own acquiescence seemed unmanly and weak.  He rose and paced the little room to relieve his feelings.  Days and weeks of almost constant dissipation had affected his mental poise quite as disastrously as the strain of the past twenty-four hours had told upon his physical control, and he was shaking nervously.  He paused at the sideboard finally and poured himself a steadying drink.

Lorelei watched his trembling fingers fill the glass before she spoke.

“You mustn’t touch that,” she said, positively.

“Eh?” He turned, still frowning absent-mindedly.  “Oh, this?” He held the glass to the light.  “You mean you want me to begin—­now?  A fellow has to sober up gradually, my dear.  I really need a jolt—­ I’m all unstrung.”

“I sealed the bargain.”

“But, Lorelei—­” He set the glass down with a mirthless laugh.  “Of course, I won’t, if you insist.  I intended to taper off—­a chap can’t turn teetotaler the way he turns a handspring.”  He eyed the glass with a sudden intensity of longing.  “Let’s begin to-morrow.  Nobody starts a new life at two A. M. And—­it’s all poured out.”

She answered by taking the glass and flinging its contents from the open window.  This done, she gathered the bottles from the sideboard—­there were not many—­and, opening the folding-doors that masked the kitchenette, she up-ended them over the sink.  When the last gurgle had died away she went to her husband and put her arms around his neck.