The smooth celerity with which this whole adventure ran its course argued a thorough preparation on James’s part, but Lorelei was in no condition to analyze.  On the contrary, she was tossed in the vortex of warring impulses.  More than once she laid her hand upon the cab door, feeling that she could not go on with this damnable travesty.  But necessity urged; she was tired, disgusted, reckless.  Her former arguments continued to prove potent.

Even at the journey’s end there was a suspicious lack of delay.  The vehicle stopped in a narrow business street, now dark and dismal; its occupants were hurried up a stairway and into a room filled with law-books, where a sleepy Justice of the Peace was nodding in a cloud of cigar smoke.  There followed a noisy shuffling of chairs, some mumbled questions and answers, the crackle of papers, a deal of unintelligible rigamarole, then a man’s heavy seal-ring was slipped upon Lorelei’s finger, and she knew herself to be Mrs. Robert Wharton.  It was all confused, unimpressive, unreal.  She was never able fully to recall the picture of that room or the events that occurred there.  They formed but a part of the kaleidoscopic jumble of the night’s occurrences.

The wedding party was in the cab once more, and it was under way.  Lilas was singing maudlinly, lying back in Jim’s arms with her feet projecting through a window; the groom was laughing foolishly and pawing at his bride.  The street lights reeled by in drunken procession.  Now that his work was done, Jim flung aside his caution and, popping the cork of a wine-bottle, drank deeply, in disregard of Lilas’s attempts to share the contents.  He was fiercely elated; he imbibed with the eager thirst of a dipsomaniac.  It was all so like a nightmare that Lorelei began to doubt her own sanity.

Once at rest in the dim-lit tunnel of the ferry-boat, however, she was brought sharply to herself by hearing her brother exclaim:  “Say!  He hasn’t kissed her yet.”

Lilas shrieked, and Bob stiffened himself, then slipped an arm around his bride.  As she shrank away he mumbled angrily:  “Here!  I won’t stand for that,” and crushed her to him.  He tipped her head back, then pressed his lips to hers, and she yielded, her whole body a-quiver with repugnance.  But it was part of the price, she told herself; therefore she paid, although she was like to faint with the effort.  She became conscious of a sudden savagery that swept over Bob at her first surrender, and in revulsion fought herself free from his embrace.  He followed her, his eyes fierce, his hot breath heavy with the fumes of wine; his clutch hurt her, “By God!” he mumbled, thickly, “You are beautiful—­beautiful.  And you’re mine.  She’s mine, eh?  No foolishness about that, is there?” he appealed to Jim.

As they drew in toward the New York side the chauffeur inquired, “Where to, now?"’

“Why, drive us—­” Jim hesitated.  There was a silence which Lilas broke with a titter.  The bridegroom joined her in an awkward laugh.