Chapter 19 - Page 2

surely stretch his offer to keep his name off the bill-boards. Of course, we won't get anything like what we expected, but we'll get something. Fifteen or twenty thousand is better than--" Noting the shadow of a smile upon her daughter's lips, she checked her rush of words. "You don't seem to care what--"

"I don't."

Mrs. Knight's face twisted into an expression of pained incredulity. "Surely you don't mean to live with Bob?" she gasped. "Not--NOW."

"I do mean to."

The mother's lips parted, closed, parted again--she seemed to taste something unspeakably bitter. She groped for words to fit her state of mind, but words failed her. When she did speak, however, the weakness of her vocabulary was offset by the shrill tone of her surprise. "My DEAR! Why, my DEAR! He hasn't a CENT. Of course you're quite confused now--you've been through a lot, and you think he's the only man in the world--but it's impossible. It's absurd. The marriage was only a form. You're no more his wife in the sight of God than--"

"Let's not talk about God," cried Lorelei. "That ceremony was scarcely legal, not to speak of religion or decency."

"You've lost your mind. You've changed completely."

"Yes, I have. You see, I wasn't a wife until yesterday--until Bob and I had an understanding; but I AM a wife now, and I suppose I'll never be a girl again. I've begun to think for myself, mother; I've begun to understand. I've had a suspicion that my old ideas were wrong, and they were."

"Fiddle-de-dee! You're hysterical. You can't make me believe you learned to love that man."

"I don't say I love him."

Mrs. Knight snorted her triumph loudly. "Then you mustn't live with him another moment. My dear child, such a relationship is-- well, think it out for yourself."

Lorelei saw the futility of argument, but certain thoughts demanded expression, and she voiced them, as much for her own sake as for her mother's. "It's too late to talk about that kind of honor. But there's another kind. When I married Bob I sold myself; and all of us--I mean the family--knew that what I sold was counterfeit. He thought he was getting something more than my body, but we knew he wasn't, and now that we find we took bad money for a worthless article, how can we pretend to be swindled? When people try to cheat, and get cheated themselves, what do they do? If they're game they smile and take their medicine, don't they?"

It was plain that this form of logic impressed the listener not at all. Lorelei continued:

"I've learned that marriage is more than I considered it, mother. It's an obligation. I intend to live up to my part just as long as Bob lives up to his. If he complained of the fraud we practised on him I'd be willing to