reassuringly. "Marriages aren't made in heaven any more--that's
old stuff. They're made in Hoboken, while the cab waits. Get your
things on, everybody, while I telephone." He allowed no loitering;
he waved the girls away, sent the waiter scurrying with his bill,
helped Robert secure hat and stick, and then dove into a
telephone-booth as a woodchuck enters its hole. When he had
disposed his three charges inside a taxi-cab he disappeared
briefly, to return with a basket of champagne upon his arm. It is
a wise general who provides himself in advance with ammunition.

It was not late, as late hours are computed, but the streets were
empty of traffic; hence the driver made good time, and a waiting
ferry at the foot of Forty-second Street helped to shorten the
journey. The wine-basket was lighter as the machine rushed up the
cobbled incline to the crest of the Weehawken bluffs; Bob and
Lilas were singing as it tore down the Boulevard.

The smooth celerity with which this whole adventure ran its course
argued a thorough preparation on James's part, but Lorelei was in
no condition to analyze. On the contrary, she was tossed in the
vortex of warring impulses. More than once she laid her hand upon
the cab door, feeling that she could not go on with this damnable
travesty. But necessity urged; she was tired, disgusted, reckless.
Her former arguments continued to prove potent.

Even at the journey's end there was a suspicious lack of delay.
The vehicle stopped in a narrow business street, now dark and
dismal; its occupants were hurried up a stairway and into a room
filled with law-books, where a sleepy Justice of the Peace was
nodding in a cloud of cigar smoke. There followed a noisy