They got into the cab and drove away without exciting suspicion.  Merkle alighted two blocks up the avenue and sped to his own house; Bob turned his jaded nag westward through the sunken road that led toward the Elegancia and Lorelei.

The owner of the equipage was waiting patiently, and there still lacked something of the allotted hour when the exchanged garments had been transferred to their respective owners.  Bob walked toward the Elegancia with a feeling of extreme fatigue in his limbs, for the effort to conquer his intoxication had left him weak; he dimly realized also that he was still far from sober.

There was no answer when he rang at Lilas Lynn’s apartment; the hall-boy volunteered the information that the occupant had just gone out with a gentleman.  Miss Knight?  Yes, she was up-stairs, he supposed.  But when Bob undertook to go up there was prompt objection.  The attendant would not hear to such a thing until he had first called Miss Knight.  Even Lorelei’s halting assurance that the gentleman was indeed her husband did not wholly satisfy, and it was with a suspicious mien that the man finally gave way.

Bob was surprised at his wife’s apparent self-control when she let him in.  Except for the slim hand pressed to her bosom and the anxiety lurking in her deep blue eyes she might have just come from the theater.  Those eyes, he noted, were very dark, almost black, under this emotional stress; they questioned him, mutely.

“We got him home all right,” he told her, when they stood facing each other in the tiny living-room.

“Will he live?”

“Oh yes.  He says he’s not badly hurt, and Merkle agrees.  Lord! we’d never left him alone if we’d thought—­”

“I’m glad.  When the telephone rang I thought—­it was the police.”

“There, there!” he said, comfortingly, seeing her tremble.  “I won’t let anybody hurt you.  I was terribly drunk—­things are swimming yet—­but all the way across town I couldn’t think of anything, anybody except you and what it would mean to you if it got out.”

“It will get out, I’m sure.  Such things always do.”

He eyed her gravely, kindly, with an expression she had never seen upon his face.

“Then—­we’ll face it together,” he said.

After a moment her glance drooped, a faint color tinged her cheeks.  “I—­wouldn’t dare face it alone.  I couldn’t.  But you’re tired—­sick.”  He nodded.  “You must lie down and sleep, and get to be yourself again—­We can’t tell what may happen now at any moment.”

“It’s the reaction, I suppose.  I’m all in.  And you?”

She shook her head.  “I couldn’t sleep if I tried.  I feel as if I’d never be able to sleep again.  I—­I’ll sit and watch and—­wait.”

CHAPTER XVI

That afternoon Mrs. Knight, in a great flutter of excitement, arrived with Jim at the Elegancia.  Embracing her daughter in tremulous, almost tearful delight, she burst forth: