"Use your own judgment, please. You can handle drunken men better than I. And don't trouble to send a maid to my room. I'll be down-stairs when the car comes."
The hostess continued to demur feebly, but Lorelei cut short any further discussion, and, once behind her own locked door, she dressed with feverish haste. Her only desire now was to escape from Fennellcourt and all its guests as quickly as possible. Her thoughts concerning Bob at the moment were too much involved in anger at the Fennells and at Hayman to be quite coherent.
She was pacing the gloom of the porte-cochere when an automobile swung out from among the trees and swept the shadows flying with its brushes of flame. As she directed the driver, from an open window behind her came a drunken shout; a burst of men's laughter followed the car as it rolled away.
So that was the charmed circle to which she had aspired, those the people she had envied; behind her was that life to which she had sold herself, and this was the end of her dream of fine ladies and gallant gentlemen! Lorelei scarcely knew whether to laugh or to cry. As she stared out at the night shapes capering past she felt acute personal shame that she had been tricked into even a brief association with so vile a crew. That uproar of men's voices rang in her ears like a jeering farewell, and she realized that in all probability her flight would appear ridiculous to Bob's friends. Women like the kalsomined widow, the masculine matron, the jaded Wyeth girl, would echo that laughter and score her with their gossip on the morrow; the thought turned her mind bitterly toward Bob. He had defiled her by bringing her into contact with those libertines. He had left her defenseless against their insults and unprotected from the assaults of men he knew to be capable of anything. He had told her to forget she was married and have a good time; he had refused her appeal for protection. She asked herself dazedly what sort of a creature he could be. Of a sudden the old life of the theater and the cafe seemed clean as opposed to the fetid existence behind her; even Jim, adventurer, crook, blackmailer that he was, appeared wholesome compared with men like Hayman and his brother-in-law. Although Lorelei, under ordinary circumstances, was even-tempered, her anger, once aroused, was tenacious. As she brooded over her humiliation her indignation at Bob began to take definite shape and purpose.
She reached the little apartment in the hushed hours before the dawn, and straightway began her packing. Since Bob was doubtless in a drunken stupor which would last for hours, she did not hurry.
Only once did she halt in her labors, and then only from surprise. In a bureau drawer she uncovered a bundle of letters and documents addressed to her husband, which in some way aroused her curiosity. Swallowing her qualms, she examined the contents. They proved to be, in the main, letters from Bob's mother and father urging him to break off his marriage. Those from Mr. Wharton were characteristically intolerant and dictatorial; those from Bob's mother were plaintive and infinitely sad. Both parents, she perceived, had exhausted every effort to win their son from his infatuation, both believed Lorelei to be an infamous woman bent upon his destruction, and, judging from the typewritten reports inclosed with some of the father's letters, there was ample reason for such a belief. These reports covered Lorelei's every movement, they bared every bit of ancient scandal connected with her, they recounted salacious stage gossip as fact and falsely construed those actions which were capable of more than one interpretation. It gave the girl a peculiar sensation of unreality to see her life laid out before her eyes in so distorted a shape, and when she read the business-like biographies of herself and the members of her family she could only marvel at Bob's faith. For evidently he had not answered a single letter. Nevertheless, after preparing an early breakfast, she sent her trunks down-stairs and 'phoned for a taxi-cab.
CHAPTER XXIV
On Tuesday afternoon a badly shaken, exceedingly frightened young man called at Campbell Pope's boarding-house.
"Good Lord, Bob! Been on another bat?" cried Pope, at sight of his caller. Wharton took a fleeting glance at himself in a mirror and nodded, noting for the first time the sacks beneath his eyes, the haggard lines from nostrils to lip-corners.
"I'm all in. Lorelei's quit me," he said, dully.