“I don’t want to be unkind,” she murmured, “but sometimes I’m sick with disgust, and then again I’m frightened.  Where are we heading?  What’s going to become of us?—­of me?  That man, last night—­there was something in his face, something in the way he held me—­just as if I were his for the taking.  It isn’t the first time I’ve seen it, either.  All the men I meet are beasts.  That whole party was sordid and mean—­old men drinking with girls and pawing them over.  Mr. Merkle was the only nice one there.”  The mother was dismayed to feel her daughter shiver.

“Good Lord!  You people make me sick,” cried Jim, rising and making for his room.  “Anybody’d think you’d been insulted.”

When he had gone Mrs. Knight asked, accusingly.

“Lorelei, are you in love?”

“No.  Why?”

“You’ve said some queer things lately.  You’ve worried me.  I hope you’ll never be tempted to do anything so—­to be foolish.  Just look at the girls who have made silly matches; they all go back to work.  You can’t be too careful with the men you meet, for you’re so beautiful that they’ll promise you anything or pretend to be everything they aren’t.  I don’t intend to let you make a mess of things by marrying some chorus-man.  When the right person comes along you’ll accept him, then you’ll never have to worry again.  But you must be careful.”

“Do you think I’d be happy with a man like Mr. Wharton?”

“Why not?  You’d at least be rich, and if rich people can’t be happy, who can?  If you accepted some poor boy he’d probably turn out to be a drunkard and a loafer, just like Wharton is now.”  She sighed.  “I’d like to see you settled; we could take Peter to a specialist, and maybe he could be cured.  The doctor says there is a chance.  But it would take a world of money.”

“I’ll get the money.”

“How?”

“Somehow.  If you’d let me economize on clothes, and if Jim would help a little, we could save enough.”

“Jim has all he can do to take care of himself—­I’m sure I don’t know how he manages—­and you’ve got to keep up appearances.  No; Peter will have to wait till you’re married—­only I did hope, when you told me about Robert Wharton, that he might be the one.  We could go abroad and get the help of those German surgeons.  I’ve always wanted to travel.”

When Lorelei reached the theater that evening she found Lilas Lynn entertaining a caller who had been more than once in her thoughts during the day.  Jim’s reference to Max Melcher had recalled Mr. Merkle’s earnest words of the previous night, and, although her brother had implied that Melcher was engineering the affair between Lilas and the steel man, Lorelei could not bring herself to take the statement seriously.  It was too absurd.  She could not imagine how such a thing could be managed by a third person, or how he could profit by it.  Her stage experience had acquainted her with several intrigues