nauseated, disillusioned, miserable, seeing more clearly than ever
the depths into which she had unwittingly sunk, and the infamy
into which Jim had descended. Nor was the change, she reflected,
confined to them alone. Upon the other members of the family the
city had stamped its mark just as plainly. She recalled the
ideals, the indefinite but glorious dreams of advancement that she
had cherished upon leaving Vale, and realized with a shock how
steadily she had degenerated. Where was her girlhood? Where was
that self-respect, that purity of impulse and thought that all men
recognize as precious? Gradually, bit by bit, they had slipped
away. Wisdom had come in their place; knowledge was hers, but
faith had rotted. Time was when the sight of a drunken man filled
her with terror; now the one beside her scarcely awakened disgust.
Bad women had seemed unreal--phantoms of another world. Now she
brushed shoulders with them daily, and her own maidenhood was
soiled by the contact. She was a girl only in name; in reality she
was a woman of the streets, or so she viewed herself in the
bitterness of this hour.

At his hotel Wharton roused himself, and Lorelei sent him reeling
into the vestibule. Then she and Jim turned homeward through the
deserted streets.




CHAPTER XI


During the last act of the matinee on the day following Lorelei