A frightened maid began preparations for his dinner, but he ordered her away.  Then when she brought him a tray, anger at the thought that his own comfort should be considered of consequence made him refuse to touch it.

At length his inactivity became unbearable, and, feeling the desperate need of sane counsel, he telephoned to John Merkle.  Bob was too deeply agitated to more than note the banker’s statement that Mr. and Mrs. Hannibal Wharton were in the city, but, recalling it later, he experienced a stab of regret that his mother was not here to comfort Lorelei in the first great crisis of her womanhood.  It had been Lorelei’s wish that her own mother be kept in ignorance of the truth, and now, therefore, the girl had no one to lean upon except an unpractical stage-woman—­and a drunken husband.  In Bob’s mind the pity of it grew as the time crept on.

But Adoree Demorest was wonderful.  Despite her inexperience she was calm, capable, sympathetic, and, best of all, her normality afforded a support upon which both the husband and the wife could rest.  When she finally made herself ready for the street Bob cried piteously: 

“You’re not going to leave us?”

“I must.  It’s nearly theater-time,” she told him.  “It’s one of the penalties of this business that nothing must hold the curtain; but I’ll be back the minute the show is over.”

“Lorelei needs you.”

Adoree nodded; her eyes met Bob’s squarely, and he saw that they were wet.  Her face was tender, and in spite of her grotesquely affected toilette she appeared very simple and womanly at this moment.  Her absurd theatricalism was gone; she was a natural, unaffected young woman.

“I wish I could do something to help,” wearily continued Bob, but Adoree shook her head so violently that the barbaric beaded festoon beneath her chin clicked and rattled.

“She knows you’re close by; that’s enough.  This is a poor time to preach, but—­it seems to me if you’ve got a bit of real manhood in you, Bob, you’ll never drink again.  The shock of seeing you like this—­when she needed you—­didn’t help her any.”

“I know!  I know!” The words were wrung from him like a groan.  “But the thing is bigger and stronger than I am.  It takes both of us to fight it.  If she should—­leave me I’d never pull through and—­I wouldn’t want to.”

Never until she left Lorelei’s house and turned toward the white lights of Broadway did Adoree Demorest fully realize whither her theatrical career had carried her.  Lorelei, it seemed to her now, had lived to high purpose; she was soon to be a mother.  But as for herself—­the dancer cringed at the thought.  What had her life brought?  Notoriety, shame!  In the eyes of men she was abominable.  She had sold herself for the satisfaction of seeing a false name blazoned in electric lights, while Lorelei had played the game differently and won.  Yes, she would have won even though she died to-night.