A silent-footed figure in a nurse's uniform emerged from the dining-room, and her first expression of relief at sight of Bob changed swiftly to a stare of startled wonderment. Bob was not too drunk to read the half-spoken protest on her lips. Then he heard his wife calling him and realized that somehow she knew of his coming. At the sound of her voice, strangely throaty and hoarse from pain, the strength ran out of his body. The doctor heard him fumbling at the bedroom door and admitted him; then a low, aching cry of disappointment sounded, and Adoree Demorest bowed her head upon her arms. When Bob groped his way back into the living-room his look was ghastly; his face was damp; his eyes were desperate. "She sent me away," he whispered. "Poor thing!" He winced at Adoree's tone. "God! I heard her when she saw you. I wonder if you realize--" "Oh yes," he nodded, slowly. "I don't get drunk all over, like most men. I'm afraid I'll never forget that cry." He was trembling, and his terror was so pitiful that Adoree laid a compassionate hand upon his shoulder. "Don't let go, Bob. Hold your thoughts steady and sober up. We must all help." "Tell me--you know about these things--tell me honestly--" "What do I know about such things? What can I tell you?" bitterly cried the dancer. "I don't know anything about babies. I never even held one in my arms. I'm worse frightened than you are." Darkness found Bob huddled in his chair fighting for his senses, but as the liquor died in him terrible fancies came to life. Those muffled cries of pain rising now and then terrorized him, and yet the long intervals of silence between were worse, for then it seemed to him that the fight must be going against his wife and that her strength must be proving insufficient. There were times, too, when he felt the paralyzing conviction that he was alone in the house, and more than once he stole down the hall, his heart between his teeth, his body shaking in a palsy of apprehension. A frightened maid began preparations for his dinner, but he ordered her away. Then when she brought him a tray, anger at the thought that his own comfort should be considered of consequence made him refuse to touch it. At length his inactivity became unbearable, and, feeling the desperate need of sane counsel, he telephoned to John Merkle. Bob was too deeply agitated to more than note the banker's statement that Mr. and Mrs. Hannibal Wharton were in the city, but, recalling it later, he experienced a stab of regret that his mother was not here to comfort Lorelei in the first great crisis of her womanhood. It had been Lorelei's wish that her own mother be kept in ignorance of the truth, and now, therefore, the girl had no one to lean upon except an unpractical stage-woman--and a drunken husband. In Bob's mind the pity of it grew as the time crept on.