But she was in a wanton mood to-night, and of late a voice had been desperately urging her to grasp at what she could, that she might, as long as possible, delay her descent into worse conditions.

She heard Lilas inquiring:  “When does the marriage come off?  Right away?”

Bob, who appeared somewhat dazed by the suddenness and the completeness of his good fortune, smiled vacantly.  “Any time suits me,” he said.  “I’m a happy man—­little Joys are capering all over the place and old Dr. Gloom has packed his grip.”

Jim startled them all by saying, crisply:  “Let’s make it to-night.  I know Bob—­he’s not the sort to wait.”

“Fine!  Never thought of that.”  Bob welcomed the suggestion with a delight that drowned Lorelei’s frightened protest; then, as the idea grew in his mind, he joyously appropriated it as his own.  A mere proposal of marriage and an acceptance were more or less hackneyed; the event contained no elements of the spectacular; but to follow it promptly with a midnight ceremony impressed him as a grandiose achievement and one calculated to shed luster upon his adventurous career.  “That’s my idea of romance—­that’s the way I like to do things,” he declared.  “We’ll be married soon’s I pay this check.”  Fumbling through his pockets, he remembered that his last dollar had gone across Melcher’s gaming-table earlier in the evening, and cried in dismay, “Hold on!  Nothing doing in the marriage line, after all.  I’m bust.  Isn’t that a burglar’s luck?  And right on the altar steps, too.”

“I’ll settle everything—­all the way through,” Jim offered, eagerly.

Bob feebly demurred, asserting that his temporary financial condition ruined the whole joke, and that he never married without a pocket full of money; but as Jim insisted, and seeing that Miss Lynn was becoming tearful at the thought of a disappointment, he yielded grudgingly.

“But—­I say—­where do they keep these weddings?” he inquired.  “Everything’s closed now, and there’s nobody dancing at the City Hall, is there?” He appealed helplessly to Jim.

Jim rose to the occasion with the same promptitude he had displayed throughout.  “Leave it to Jimmy the Fixer,” he cried, reassuringly.  “Marriages aren’t made in heaven any more—­that’s old stuff.  They’re made in Hoboken, while the cab waits.  Get your things on, everybody, while I telephone.”  He allowed no loitering; he waved the girls away, sent the waiter scurrying with his bill, helped Robert secure hat and stick, and then dove into a telephone-booth as a woodchuck enters its hole.  When he had disposed his three charges inside a taxi-cab he disappeared briefly, to return with a basket of champagne upon his arm.  It is a wise general who provides himself in advance with ammunition.

It was not late, as late hours are computed, but the streets were empty of traffic; hence the driver made good time, and a waiting ferry at the foot of Forty-second Street helped to shorten the journey.  The wine-basket was lighter as the machine rushed up the cobbled incline to the crest of the Weehawken bluffs; Bob and Lilas were singing as it tore down the Boulevard.