The cab swung into the curb, and he scrambled out, then stumbled blindly up the steps and into the building where he lived.

Adoree met him at his own door.  Lorelei’s summons had evidently found the dancer dressed for anything except such a crisis, for Miss Demorest was arrayed in the very newest importation.  The lower half of her figure was startlingly suggestive of the harem, while above the waist she was adorned like a Chinese princess.  A tango cap of gold crowned her swirls of hair, and from it depended a string of tremendous beads, looped beneath her chin.  She presented a futurist combination of colors, mainly Mandarin yellow and royal blue, both of which in some peculiar way seemed to extend upward, tingeing her cheeks.  But Wharton’s impression was vague; he saw little more than the tragic widening of the girl’s eyes as she recognized his condition.

“Am I as bad as that?” he stammered.  “Do you think she’ll notice it?”

“Oh, Bob!” Adoree cried, in a stricken voice.  “How could you—­at this time?”

“You said she wanted me.  I couldn’t take time—­”

“Yes!  She has been calling for you, but I’m sorry I found you.”

A silent-footed figure in a nurse’s uniform emerged from the dining-room, and her first expression of relief at sight of Bob changed swiftly to a stare of startled wonderment.  Bob was not too drunk to read the half-spoken protest on her lips.  Then he heard his wife calling him and realized that somehow she knew of his coming.  At the sound of her voice, strangely throaty and hoarse from pain, the strength ran out of his body.  The doctor heard him fumbling at the bedroom door and admitted him; then a low, aching cry of disappointment sounded, and Adoree Demorest bowed her head upon her arms.

When Bob groped his way back into the living-room his look was ghastly; his face was damp; his eyes were desperate.

“She sent me away,” he whispered.

“Poor thing!” He winced at Adoree’s tone.  “God!  I heard her when she saw you.  I wonder if you realize—­”

“Oh yes,” he nodded, slowly.  “I don’t get drunk all over, like most men.  I’m afraid I’ll never forget that cry.”

He was trembling, and his terror was so pitiful that Adoree laid a compassionate hand upon his shoulder.

“Don’t let go, Bob.  Hold your thoughts steady and sober up.  We must all help.”

“Tell me—­you know about these things—­tell me honestly—­”

“What do I know about such things?  What can I tell you?” bitterly cried the dancer.  “I don’t know anything about babies.  I never even held one in my arms.  I’m worse frightened than you are.”

Darkness found Bob huddled in his chair fighting for his senses, but as the liquor died in him terrible fancies came to life.  Those muffled cries of pain rising now and then terrorized him, and yet the long intervals of silence between were worse, for then it seemed to him that the fight must be going against his wife and that her strength must be proving insufficient.  There were times, too, when he felt the paralyzing conviction that he was alone in the house, and more than once he stole down the hall, his heart between his teeth, his body shaking in a palsy of apprehension.