Despite his jocularity he was deeply moved. As the situation grew clearer to him he saw that this girl was about to change the whole current of his careless life; her unexpected firmness, her gentle, womanly determination at this crisis was very grateful--he desperately longed to retain its support--and yet the arrangement to which she had forced his consent went sorely against his grain. His struggle had not been easy. Her surrender to him was as complete and as unselfish as his own acquiescence seemed unmanly and weak. He rose and paced the little room to relieve his feelings. Days and weeks of almost constant dissipation had affected his mental poise quite as disastrously as the strain of the past twenty-four hours had told upon his physical control, and he was shaking nervously. He paused at the sideboard finally and poured himself a steadying drink. Lorelei watched his trembling fingers fill the glass before she spoke. "You mustn't touch that," she said, positively. "Eh?" He turned, still frowning absent-mindedly. "Oh, this?" He held the glass to the light. "You mean you want me to begin--NOW? A fellow has to sober up gradually, my dear. I really need a jolt--I'm all unstrung." "I sealed the bargain." "But, Lorelei--" He set the glass down with a mirthless laugh. "Of course, I won't, if you insist. I intended to taper off--a chap can't turn teetotaler the way he turns a handspring." He eyed the glass with a sudden intensity of longing. "Let's begin to-morrow. Nobody starts a new life at two A. M. And--it's all poured out." She answered by taking the glass and flinging its contents from the open window. This done, she gathered the bottles from the sideboard--there were not many--and, opening the folding-doors that masked the kitchenette, she up-ended them over the sink. When the last gurgle had died away she went to her husband and put her arms around his neck. "You must," she said, gently. "If you'll only let me have my way we'll win. But, Bob, dear, it's going to be a bitter fight." Lorelei's family spent most of the night in discussing their great good fortune. Even Jim, worn out as he was by his part in the events connected with the marriage, sat until a late hour planning his sister's future, and incidentally his own. After he had gone to bed mother and father remained in a glow of exhilaration that made sleep impossible, and it was nearly dawn when they retired to dreams of hopes achieved and ambitions realized. About nine-thirty on the following morning, just when the rival Wall Street forces were gathering, Hannibal Wharton called up the Knight establishment. Mrs. Knight was impatient and at first refused to be disturbed, but when the servant at last made it plain that it was Hannibal C. Wharton, not his son Robert, calling, she leaped from her bed with the agility of an acrobat. "Peter," she cried, "it's Mr. Wharton himself!"