But how could a woman like Adoree Demorest, “The King’s Favorite,” “The Woman with the Rubies,” hope for wifehood or for motherhood?  The bitterness of these reflections lay in the fact that Adoree knew herself to be pure.  But the world considered her evil, and evil in its eyes she would remain.  How could she hope to bring anything but misery to a husband or bequeath anything but shame to a child?  At this moment she would gladly have changed places with that other girl whose life hung in the scales.

John Merkle had never lost interest in Lorelei, nor forgotten her refusal of his well-meant offer of assistance.  From the night of their first meeting she had intrigued his interest, and her marriage to Bob had deepened his friendly feeling.  Although he prided himself upon a reputation for harsh cynicism and cherished the conviction that he was wholly without sentiment, he was in reality more emotional than he believed, and Lorelei’s courageous efforts to regenerate her husband, her vigorous determination to build respectability and happiness out of the unpromising materials at her hand, had excited his liveliest sympathy.  It pleased him to read into her character beauties and nobilities of which she was utterly unconscious if not actually devoid.  Now that she had come to a serious crisis Merkle’s slowly growing resentment at Bob’s parents for refusing to recognize her burst into anger.  The result was that soon after his talk with Bob he telephoned Hannibal Wharton, making known the situation in the most disagreeable and biting manner of which he was capable.  Strange to say, Wharton heard him through, then thanked him before ringing off.

When Hannibal had repeated the news to his wife she moved slowly to a window and stood there staring down into the glittering chasm of Fifth Avenue.  Bob’s mother was a frail, erect, impassive woman, wearied and saddened with the weight of her husband’s millions.  There had been a time when society knew her, but of late years she saw few people, and her name was seldom mentioned except in connection with her benefactions.  Even the true satisfaction of giving had been denied her, since real charity means sacrifice.  Wealth had lent her a painful conspicuousness and had made her a target for multifarious demands so insistent, so ill-considered, so unworthy—­many of them—­that she had been forced into an isolation, more strict even than her husband’s.

Great responsibilities had changed Hannibal Wharton into a machine; he had become mechanical even in his daily life, in his pleasures, in his relaxations.  His suspicions and his dislikes were also more or less automatic, but in all his married life he had never found cause to complain of anything his wife had done.  He was serenely conscious, moreover, of her complete accord with his every action, and now, therefore, in reporting Merkle’s conversation he spoke musingly, as a man speaks to himself.