Chapter: I

THE summer before, Mrs. Babbitt's letters had crackled with desire to
return to Zenith. Now they said nothing of returning, but a wistful
"I suppose everything is going on all right without me" among her dry
chronicles of weather and sicknesses hinted to Babbitt that he hadn't
been very urgent about her coming. He worried it:

"If she were here, and I went on raising cain like I been doing, she'd
have a fit. I got to get hold of myself. I got to learn to play around
and yet not make a fool of myself. I can do it, too, if folks like
Verg Gunch 'll let me alone, and Myra 'll stay away. But--poor kid, she
sounds lonely. Lord, I don't want to hurt her!"

Impulsively he wrote that they missed her, and her next letter said
happily that she was coming home.

He persuaded himself that he was eager to see her. He bought roses
for the house, he ordered squab for dinner, he had the car cleaned and
polished. All the way home from the station with her he was adequate
in his accounts of Ted's success in basket-ball at the university, but
before they reached Floral Heights there was nothing more to say, and
already he felt the force of her stolidity, wondered whether he could
remain a good husband and still sneak out of the house this evening for
half an hour with the Bunch. When he had housed the car he blundered
upstairs, into the familiar talcum-scented warmth of her presence,
blaring, "Help you unpack your bag?"

"No, I can do it."

Slowly she turned, holding up a small box, and slowly she said, "I
brought you a present, just a new cigar-case. I don't know if you'd care
to have it--"

She was the lonely girl, the brown appealing Myra Thompson, whom he had
married, and he almost wept for pity as he kissed her and besought,
"Oh, honey, honey, CARE to have it? Of course I do! I'm awful proud you
brought it to me. And I needed a new case badly."

He wondered how he would get rid of the case he had bought the week
before.

"And you really are glad to see me back?"

"Why, you poor kiddy, what you been worrying about?"

"Well, you didn't seem to miss me very much."

By the time he had finished his stint of lying they were firmly bound
again. By ten that evening it seemed improbable that she had ever
been away. There was but one difference: the problem of remaining a
respectable husband, a Floral Heights husband, yet seeing Tanis and
the Bunch with frequency. He had promised to telephone to Tanis that
evening, and now it was melodramatically impossible. He prowled about
the telephone, impulsively thrusting out a hand to lift the receiver,
but never quite daring to risk it. Nor could he find a reason
for slipping down to the drug store on Smith Street, with its
telephone-booth. He was laden with responsibility till he threw it off
with the speculation: "Why the deuce should I fret so about not being
able to 'phone Tanis? She can get along without me. I don't owe her
anything. She's a fine girl, but I've given her just as much as she has
me. . . . Oh, damn these women and the way they get you all tied up in
complications!"


II

For a week he was attentive to his wife, took her to the theater, to
dinner at the Littlefields'; then the old weary dodging and shifting
began and at least two evenings a week he spent with the Bunch. He still
made pretense of going to the Elks and to committee-meetings but less
and less did he trouble to have his excuses interesting, less and less
did she affect to believe them. He was certain that she knew he was
associating with what Floral Heights called "a sporty crowd," yet
neither of them acknowledged it. In matrimonial geography the distance
between the first mute recognition of a break and the admission thereof
is as great as the distance between the first naive faith and the first
doubting.

As he began to drift away he also began to see her as a human being, to
like and dislike her instead of accepting her as a comparatively movable
part of the furniture, and he compassionated that husband-and-wife
relation which, in twenty-five years of married life, had become a
separate and real entity. He recalled their high lights: the summer
vacation in Virginia meadows under the blue wall of the mountains; their
motor tour through Ohio, and the exploration of Cleveland, Cincinnati,
and Columbus; the birth of Verona; their building of this new house,
planned to comfort them through a happy old age--chokingly they had said
that it might be the last home either of them would ever have. Yet his
most softening remembrance of these dear moments did not keep him from
barking at dinner, "Yep, going out f' few hours. Don't sit up for me."

He did not dare now to come home drunk, and though he rejoiced in his
return to high morality and spoke with gravity to Pete and Fulton Bemis
about their drinking, he prickled at Myra's unexpressed criticisms and
sulkily meditated that a "fellow couldn't ever learn to handle himself
if he was always bossed by a lot of women."

He no longer wondered if Tanis wasn't a bit worn and sentimental. In
contrast to the complacent Myra he saw her as swift and air-borne and
radiant, a fire-spirit tenderly stooping to the hearth, and however
pitifully he brooded on his wife, he longed to be with Tanis.

Then Mrs. Babbitt tore the decent cloak from her unhappiness and
the astounded male discovered that she was having a small determined
rebellion of her own.


III

They were beside the fireless fire-place, in the evening.

"Georgie," she said, "you haven't given me the list of your household
expenses while I was away."

"No, I--Haven't made it out yet." Very affably: "Gosh, we must try to
keep down expenses this year."

"That's so. I don't know where all the money goes to. I try to
economize, but it just seems to evaporate."

"I suppose I oughtn't to spend so much on cigars. Don't know but what
I'll cut down my smoking, maybe cut it out entirely. I was thinking of
a good way to do it, the other day: start on these cubeb cigarettes, and
they'd kind of disgust me with smoking."

"Oh, I do wish you would! It isn't that I care, but honestly, George, it
is so bad for you to smoke so much. Don't you think you could reduce the
amount? And George--I notice now, when you come home from these lodges
and all, that sometimes you smell of whisky. Dearie, you know I don't
worry so much about the moral side of it, but you have a weak stomach
and you can't stand all this drinking."

"Weak stomach, hell! I guess I can carry my booze about as well as most
folks!"

"Well, I do think you ought to be careful. Don't you see, dear, I don't
want you to get sick."

"Sick, rats! I'm not a baby! I guess I ain't going to get sick just
because maybe once a week I shoot a highball! That's the trouble with
women. They always exaggerate so."

"George, I don't think you ought to talk that way when I'm just speaking
for your own good."

"I know, but gosh all fishhooks, that's the trouble with women! They're
always criticizing and commenting and bringing things up, and then they
say it's 'for your own good'!"

"Why, George, that's not a nice way to talk, to answer me so short."

"Well, I didn't mean to answer short, but gosh, talking as if I was a
kindergarten brat, not able to tote one highball without calling for the
St. Mary's ambulance! A fine idea you must have of me!"

"Oh, it isn't that; it's just--I don't want to see you get sick and--My,
I didn't know it was so late! Don't forget to give me those household
accounts for the time while I was away."

"Oh, thunder, what's the use of taking the trouble to make 'em out now?
Let's just skip 'em for that period."

"Why, George Babbitt, in all the years we've been married we've never
failed to keep a complete account of every penny we've spent!"

"No. Maybe that's the trouble with us."

"What in the world do you mean?"

"Oh, I don't mean anything, only--Sometimes I get so darn sick and tired
of all this routine and the accounting at the office and expenses
at home and fussing and stewing and fretting and wearing myself out
worrying over a lot of junk that doesn't really mean a doggone thing,
and being so careful and--Good Lord, what do you think I'm made for?
I could have been a darn good orator, and here I fuss and fret and
worry--"

"Don't you suppose I ever get tired of fussing? I get so bored with
ordering three meals a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year,
and ruining my eyes over that horrid sewing-machine, and looking after
your clothes and Rone's and Ted's and Tinka's and everybody's, and
the laundry, and darning socks, and going down to the Piggly Wiggly to
market, and bringing my basket home to save money on the cash-and-carry
and--EVERYTHING!"

"Well, gosh," with a certain astonishment, "I suppose maybe you do! But
talk about--Here I have to be in the office every single day, while you
can go out all afternoon and see folks and visit with the neighbors and
do any blinkin' thing you want to!"

"Yes, and a fine lot of good that does me! Just talking over the
same old things with the same old crowd, while you have all sorts of
interesting people coming in to see you at the office."

"Interesting! Cranky old dames that want to know why I haven't rented
their dear precious homes for about seven times their value, and bunch
of old crabs panning the everlasting daylights out of me because they
don't receive every cent of their rentals by three G.M. on the second of
the month! Sure! Interesting! Just as interesting as the small pox!"

"Now, George, I will not have you shouting at me that way!"

"Well, it gets my goat the way women figure out that a man doesn't do a
darn thing but sit on his chair and have lovey-dovey conferences with a
lot of classy dames and give 'em the glad eye!"

"I guess you manage to give them a glad enough eye when they do come
in."

"What do you mean? Mean I'm chasing flappers?"

"I should hope not--at your age!"

"Now you look here! You may not believe it--Of course all you see is
fat little Georgie Babbitt. Sure! Handy man around the house! Fixes the
furnace when the furnace-man doesn't show up, and pays the bills, but
dull, awful dull! Well, you may not believe it, but there's some women
that think old George Babbitt isn't such a bad scout! They think he's
not so bad-looking, not so bad that it hurts anyway, and he's got a
pretty good line of guff, and some even think he shakes a darn wicked
Walkover at dancing!"

"Yes." She spoke slowly. "I haven't much doubt that when I'm away you
manage to find people who properly appreciate you."

"Well, I just mean--" he protested, with a sound of denial. Then he was
angered into semi-honesty. "You bet I do! I find plenty of folks, and
doggone nice ones, that don't think I'm a weak-stomached baby!"

"That's exactly what I was saying! You can run around with anybody you
please, but I'm supposed to sit here and wait for you. You have the
chance to get all sorts of culture and everything, and I just stay
home--"

"Well, gosh almighty, there's nothing to prevent your reading books and
going to lectures and all that junk, is there?"

"George, I told you, I won't have you shouting at me like that! I don't
know what's come over you. You never used to speak to me in this cranky
way."

"I didn't mean to sound cranky, but gosh, it certainly makes me sore to
get the blame because you don't keep up with things."

"I'm going to! Will you help me?"

"Sure. Anything I can do to help you in the culture-grabbing line--yours
to oblige, G. F. Babbitt."

"Very well then, I want you to go to Mrs. Mudge's New Thought meeting
with me, next Sunday afternoon."

"Mrs. Who's which?"

"Mrs. Opal Emerson Mudge. The field-lecturer for the American New
Thought League. She's going to speak on 'Cultivating the Sun Spirit'
before the League of the Higher Illumination, at the Thornleigh."

"Oh, punk! New Thought! Hashed thought with a poached egg! 'Cultivating
the--' It sounds like 'Why is a mouse when it spins?' That's a fine
spiel for a good Presbyterian to be going to, when you can hear Doc
Drew!"

"Reverend Drew is a scholar and a pulpit orator and all that, but he
hasn't got the Inner Ferment, as Mrs. Mudge calls it; he hasn't any
inspiration for the New Era. Women need inspiration now. So I want you
to come, as you promised."


IV

The Zenith branch of the League of the Higher Illumination met in the
smaller ballroom at the Hotel Thornleigh, a refined apartment with pale
green walls and plaster wreaths of roses, refined parquet flooring, and
ultra-refined frail gilt chairs. Here were gathered sixty-five women and
ten men. Most of the men slouched in their chairs and wriggled, while
their wives sat rigidly at attention, but two of them--red-necked, meaty
men--were as respectably devout as their wives. They were newly rich
contractors who, having bought houses, motors, hand-painted pictures,
and gentlemanliness, were now buying a refined ready-made philosophy.
It had been a toss-up with them whether to buy New Thought, Christian
Science, or a good standard high-church model of Episcopalianism.

In the flesh, Mrs. Opal Emerson Mudge fell somewhat short of a prophetic
aspect. She was pony-built and plump, with the face of a haughty
Pekingese, a button of a nose, and arms so short that, despite her most
indignant endeavors, she could not clasp her hands in front of her as
she sat on the platform waiting. Her frock of taffeta and green velvet,
with three strings of glass beads, and large folding eye-glasses
dangling from a black ribbon, was a triumph of refinement.

Mrs. Mudge was introduced by the president of the League of the Higher
Illumination, an oldish young woman with a yearning voice, white spats,
and a mustache. She said that Mrs. Mudge would now make it plain to the
simplest intellect how the Sun Spirit could be cultivated, and they who
had been thinking about cultivating one would do well to treasure Mrs.
Mudge's words, because even Zenith (and everybody knew that Zenith stood
in the van of spiritual and New Thought progress) didn't often have
the opportunity to sit at the feet of such an inspiring Optimist and
Metaphysical Seer as Mrs. Opal Emerson Mudge, who had lived the Life of
Wider Usefulness through Concentration, and in the Silence found those
Secrets of Mental Control and the Inner Key which were immediately
going to transform and bring Peace, Power, and Prosperity to the unhappy
nations; and so, friends, would they for this precious gem-studded hour
forget the Illusions of the Seeming Real, and in the actualization of
the deep-lying Veritas pass, along with Mrs. Opal Emerson Mudge, to the
Realm Beautiful.

If Mrs. Mudge was rather pudgier than one would like one's swamis,
yogis, seers, and initiates, yet her voice had the real professional
note. It was refined and optimistic; it was overpoweringly calm; it
flowed on relentlessly, without one comma, till Babbitt was hypnotized.
Her favorite word was "always," which she pronounced olllllle-ways. Her
principal gesture was a pontifical but thoroughly ladylike blessing with
two stubby fingers.

She explained about this matter of Spiritual Saturation:

"There are those--"

Of "those" she made a linked sweetness long drawn out; a far-off
delicate call in a twilight minor. It chastely rebuked the restless
husbands, yet brought them a message of healing.

"There are those who have seen the rim and outer seeming of the Logos
there are those who have glimpsed and in enthusiasm possessed themselves
of some segment and portion of the Logos there are those who thus
flicked but not penetrated and radioactivated by the Dynamis go always
to and fro assertative that they possess and are possessed of the Logos
and the Metaphysikos but this word I bring you this concept I enlarge
that those that are not utter are not even inceptive and that holiness
is in its definitive essence always always always whole-iness and--"

It proved that the Essence of the Sun Spirit was Truth, but its Aura and
Effluxion were Cheerfulness:

"Face always the day with the dawn-laugh with the enthusiasm of the
initiate who perceives that all works together in the revolutions of
the Wheel and who answers the strictures of the Soured Souls of the
Destructionists with a Glad Affirmation--"

It went on for about an hour and seven minutes.

At the end Mrs. Mudge spoke with more vigor and punctuation:

"Now let me suggest to all of you the advantages of the Theosophical and
Pantheistic Oriental Reading Circle, which I represent. Our object is to
unite all the manifestations of the New Era into one cohesive whole--New
Thought, Christian Science, Theosophy, Vedanta, Bahaism, and the other
sparks from the one New Light. The subscription is but ten dollars
a year, and for this mere pittance the members receive not only the
monthly magazine, Pearls of Healing, but the privilege of sending right
to the president, our revered Mother Dobbs, any questions regarding
spiritual progress, matrimonial problems, health and well-being
questions, financial difficulties, and--"

They listened to her with adoring attention. They looked genteel. They
looked ironed-out. They coughed politely, and crossed their legs with
quietness, and in expensive linen handkerchiefs they blew their noses
with a delicacy altogether optimistic and refined.

As for Babbitt, he sat and suffered.

When they were blessedly out in the air again, when they drove home
through a wind smelling of snow and honest sun, he dared not speak. They
had been too near to quarreling, these days. Mrs. Babbitt forced it:

"Did you enjoy Mrs. Mudge's talk?"

"Well I--What did you get out of it?"

"Oh, it starts a person thinking. It gets you out of a routine of
ordinary thoughts."

"Well, I'll hand it to Opal she isn't ordinary, but gosh--Honest, did
that stuff mean anything to you?"

"Of course I'm not trained in metaphysics, and there was lots I couldn't
quite grasp, but I did feel it was inspiring. And she speaks so readily.
I do think you ought to have got something out of it."

"Well, I didn't! I swear, I was simply astonished, the way those women
lapped it up! Why the dickens they want to put in their time listening
to all that blaa when they--"

"It's certainly better for them than going to roadhouses and smoking and
drinking!"

"I don't know whether it is or not! Personally I don't see a whole
lot of difference. In both cases they're trying to get away from
themselves--most everybody is, these days, I guess. And I'd certainly
get a whole lot more out of hoofing it in a good lively dance, even
in some dive, than sitting looking as if my collar was too tight, and
feeling too scared to spit, and listening to Opal chewing her words."

"I'm sure you do! You're very fond of dives. No doubt you saw a lot of
them while I was away!"

"Look here! You been doing a hell of a lot of insinuating and hinting
around lately, as if I were leading a double life or something, and I'm
damn sick of it, and I don't want to hear anything more about it!"

"Why, George Babbitt! Do you realize what you're saying? Why, George, in
all our years together you've never talked to me like that!"

"It's about time then!"

"Lately you've been getting worse and worse, and now, finally, you're
cursing and swearing at me and shouting at me, and your voice so ugly
and hateful--I just shudder!"

"Oh, rats, quit exaggerating! I wasn't shouting, or swearing either."

"I wish you could hear your own voice! Maybe you don't realize how
it sounds. But even so--You never used to talk like that. You simply
COULDN'T talk this way if something dreadful hadn't happened to you."

His mind was hard. With amazement he found that he wasn't particularly
sorry. It was only with an effort that he made himself more agreeable:
"Well, gosh, I didn't mean to get sore."

"George, do you realize that we can't go on like this, getting farther
and farther apart, and you ruder and ruder to me? I just don't know
what's going to happen."

He had a moment's pity for her bewilderment; he thought of how many
deep and tender things would be hurt if they really "couldn't go on like
this." But his pity was impersonal, and he was wondering, "Wouldn't it
maybe be a good thing if--Not a divorce and all that, o' course, but
kind of a little more independence?"

While she looked at him pleadingly he drove on in a dreadful silence.





I

WHEN he was away from her, while he kicked about the garage and swept
the snow off the running-board and examined a cracked hose-connection,
he repented, he was alarmed and astonished that he could have flared out
at his wife, and thought fondly how much more lasting she was than the
flighty Bunch. He went in to mumble that he was "sorry, didn't mean to
be grouchy," and to inquire as to her interest in movies. But in the
darkness of the movie theater he brooded that he'd "gone and tied
himself up to Myra all over again." He had some satisfaction in taking
it out on Tanis Judique. "Hang Tanis anyway! Why'd she gone and got him
into these mix-ups and made him all jumpy and nervous and cranky? Too
many complications! Cut 'em out!"

He wanted peace. For ten days he did not see Tanis nor telephone to her,
and instantly she put upon him the compulsion which he hated. When
he had stayed away from her for five days, hourly taking pride in his
resoluteness and hourly picturing how greatly Tanis must miss him, Miss
McGoun reported, "Mrs. Judique on the 'phone. Like t' speak t' you 'bout
some repairs."

Tanis was quick and quiet:

"Mr. Babbitt? Oh, George, this is Tanis. I haven't seen you for
weeks--days, anyway. You aren't sick, are you?"

"No, just been terribly rushed. I, uh, I think there'll be a big revival
of building this year. Got to, uh, got to work hard."

"Of course, my man! I want you to. You know I'm terribly ambitious for
you; much more than I am for myself. I just don't want you to forget
poor Tanis. Will you call me up soon?"

"Sure! Sure! You bet!"

"Please do. I sha'n't call you again."

He meditated, "Poor kid! . . . But gosh, she oughtn't to 'phone me at
the office.... She's a wonder--sympathy 'ambitious for me.' . . . But
gosh, I won't be made and compelled to call her up till I get ready.
Darn these women, the way they make demands! It'll be one long old time
before I see her! . . . But gosh, I'd like to see her to-night--sweet
little thing.... Oh, cut that, son! Now you've broken away, be wise!"

She did not telephone again, nor he, but after five more days she wrote
to him:


Have I offended you? You must know, dear, I didn't mean to. I'm so
lonely and I need somebody to cheer me up. Why didn't you come to the
nice party we had at Carrie's last evening I remember she invited you.
Can't you come around here to-morrow Thur evening? I shall be alone and
hope to see you.


His reflections were numerous:

"Doggone it, why can't she let me alone? Why can't women ever learn a
fellow hates to be bulldozed? And they always take advantage of you by
yelling how lonely they are.

"Now that isn't nice of you, young fella. She's a fine, square, straight
girl, and she does get lonely. She writes a swell hand. Nice-looking
stationery. Plain. Refined. I guess I'll have to go see her. Well, thank
God, I got till to-morrow night free of her, anyway.

"She's nice but--Hang it, I won't be MADE to do things! I'm not married
to her. No, nor by golly going to be!

"Oh, rats, I suppose I better go see her."


II

Thursday, the to-morrow of Tanis's note, was full of emotional crises.
At the Roughnecks' Table at the club, Verg Gunch talked of the Good
Citizens' League and (it seemed to Babbitt) deliberately left him out
of the invitations to join. Old Mat Penniman, the general utility man
at Babbitt's office, had Troubles, and came in to groan about them: his
oldest boy was "no good," his wife was sick, and he had quarreled with
his brother-in-law. Conrad Lyte also had Troubles, and since Lyte was
one of his best clients, Babbitt had to listen to them. Mr. Lyte, it
appeared, was suffering from a peculiarly interesting neuralgia, and
the garage had overcharged him. When Babbitt came home, everybody had
Troubles: his wife was simultaneously thinking about discharging the
impudent new maid, and worried lest the maid leave; and Tinka desired to
denounce her teacher.

"Oh, quit fussing!" Babbitt fussed. "You never hear me whining about my
Troubles, and yet if you had to run a real-estate office--Why, to-day I
found Miss Bannigan was two days behind with her accounts, and I pinched
my finger in my desk, and Lyte was in and just as unreasonable as ever."

He was so vexed that after dinner, when it was time for a tactful escape
to Tanis, he merely grumped to his wife, "Got to go out. Be back by
eleven, should think."

"Oh! You're going out again?"

"Again! What do you mean 'again'! Haven't hardly been out of the house
for a week!"

"Are you--are you going to the Elks?"

"Nope. Got to see some people."

Though this time he heard his own voice and knew that it was curt,
though she was looking at him with wide-eyed reproach, he stumped into
the hall, jerked on his ulster and furlined gloves, and went out to
start the car.

He was relieved to find Tanis cheerful, unreproachful, and brilliant in
a frock of brown net over gold tissue. "You poor man, having to come
out on a night like this! It's terribly cold. Don't you think a small
highball would be nice?"

"Now, by golly, there's a woman with savvy! I think we could more or
less stand a highball if it wasn't too long a one--not over a foot
tall!"

He kissed her with careless heartiness, he forgot the compulsion of her
demands, he stretched in a large chair and felt that he had beautifully
come home. He was suddenly loquacious; he told her what a noble and
misunderstood man he was, and how superior to Pete, Fulton Bemis, and
the other men of their acquaintance; and she, bending forward, chin
in charming hand, brightly agreed. But when he forced himself to
ask, "Well, honey, how's things with YOU," she took his duty-question
seriously, and he discovered that she too had Troubles:

"Oh, all right but--I did get so angry with Carrie. She told Minnie that
I told her that Minnie was an awful tightwad, and Minnie told me Carrie
had told her, and of course I told her I hadn't said anything of the
kind, and then Carrie found Minnie had told me, and she was simply
furious because Minnie had told me, and of course I was just boiling
because Carrie had told her I'd told her, and then we all met up at
Fulton's--his wife is away--thank heavens!--oh, there's the dandiest
floor in his house to dance on--and we were all of us simply furious
at each other and--Oh, I do hate that kind of a mix-up, don't you? I
mean--it's so lacking in refinement, but--And Mother wants to come and
stay with me for a whole month, and of course I do love her, I suppose
I do, but honestly, she'll cramp my style something dreadful--she never
can learn not to comment, and she always wants to know where I'm going
when I go out evenings, and if I lie to her she always spies around and
ferrets around and finds out where I've been, and then she looks like
Patience on a Monument till I could just scream. And oh, I MUST tell
you--You know I never talk about myself; I just hate people who do,
don't you? But--I feel so stupid to-night, and I know I must be boring
you with all this but--What would you do about Mother?"

He gave her facile masculine advice. She was to put off her mother's
stay. She was to tell Carrie to go to the deuce. For these valuable
revelations she thanked him, and they ambled into the familiar gossip
of the Bunch. Of what a sentimental fool was Carrie. Of what a lazy
brat was Pete. Of how nice Fulton Bemis could be--"course lots of people
think he's a regular old grouch when they meet him because he doesn't
give 'em the glad hand the first crack out of the box, but when they get
to know him, he's a corker."

But as they had gone conscientiously through each of these analyses
before, the conversation staggered. Babbitt tried to be intellectual
and deal with General Topics. He said some thoroughly sound things about
Disarmament, and broad-mindedness and liberalism; but it seemed to him
that General Topics interested Tanis only when she could apply them to
Pete, Carrie, or themselves. He was distressingly conscious of their
silence. He tried to stir her into chattering again, but silence rose
like a gray presence and hovered between them.

"I, uh--" he labored. "It strikes me--it strikes me that unemployment is
lessening."

"Maybe Pete will get a decent job, then."

Silence.

Desperately he essayed, "What's the trouble, old honey? You seem kind of
quiet to-night."

"Am I? Oh, I'm not. But--do you really care whether I am or not?"

"Care? Sure! Course I do!"

"Do you really?" She swooped on him, sat on the arm of his chair.

He hated the emotional drain of having to appear fond of her. He stroked
her hand, smiled up at her dutifully, and sank back.

"George, I wonder if you really like me at all?"

"Course I do, silly."

"Do you really, precious? Do you care a bit?"

"Why certainly! You don't suppose I'd be here if I didn't!"

"Now see here, young man, I won't have you speaking to me in that huffy
way!"

"I didn't mean to sound huffy. I just--" In injured and rather childish
tones: "Gosh almighty, it makes me tired the way everybody says I
sound huffy when I just talk natural! Do they expect me to sing it or
something?"

"Who do you mean by 'everybody'? How many other ladies have you been
consoling?"

"Look here now, I won't have this hinting!"

Humbly: "I know, dear. I was only teasing. I know it didn't mean to talk
huffy--it was just tired. Forgive bad Tanis. But say you love me, say
it!"

"I love you.... Course I do."

"Yes, you do!" cynically. "Oh, darling, I don't mean to be rude but--I
get so lonely. I feel so useless. Nobody needs me, nothing I can do
for anybody. And you know, dear, I'm so active--I could be if there was
something to do. And I am young, aren't I! I'm not an old thing! I'm not
old and stupid, am I?"

He had to assure her. She stroked his hair, and he had to look pleased
under that touch, the more demanding in its beguiling softness. He was
impatient. He wanted to flee out to a hard, sure, unemotional man-world.
Through her delicate and caressing fingers she may have caught something
of his shrugging distaste. She left him--he was for the moment
buoyantly relieved--she dragged a footstool to his feet and sat looking
beseechingly up at him. But as in many men the cringing of a dog, the
flinching of a frightened child, rouse not pity but a surprised and
jerky cruelty, so her humility only annoyed him. And he saw her now
as middle-aged, as beginning to be old. Even while he detested his own
thoughts, they rode him. She was old, he winced. Old! He noted how the
soft flesh was creasing into webby folds beneath her chin, below her
eyes, at the base of her wrists. A patch of her throat had a minute
roughness like the crumbs from a rubber eraser. Old! She was younger in
years than himself, yet it was sickening to have her yearning up at him
with rolling great eyes--as if, he shuddered, his own aunt were making
love to him.

He fretted inwardly, "I'm through with this asinine fooling around. I'm
going to cut her out. She's a darn decent nice woman, and I don't want
to hurt her, but it'll hurt a lot less to cut her right out, like a good
clean surgical operation."

He was on his feet. He was speaking urgently. By every rule of
self-esteem, he had to prove to her, and to himself, that it was her
fault.

"I suppose maybe I'm kind of out of sorts to-night, but honest, honey,
when I stayed away for a while to catch up on work and everything and
figure out where I was at, you ought to have been cannier and waited
till I came back. Can't you see, dear, when you MADE me come, I--being
about an average bull-headed chump--my tendency was to resist? Listen,
dear, I'm going now--"

"Not for a while, precious! No!"

"Yep. Right now. And then sometime we'll see about the future."

"What do you mean, dear, 'about the future'? Have I done something I
oughtn't to? Oh, I'm so dreadfully sorry!"

He resolutely put his hands behind him. "Not a thing, God bless you, not
a thing. You're as good as they make 'em. But it's just--Good Lord, do
you realize I've got things to do in the world? I've got a business to
attend to and, you might not believe it, but I've got a wife and kids
that I'm awful fond of!" Then only during the murder he was committing
was he able to feel nobly virtuous. "I want us to be friends but, gosh,
I can't go on this way feeling I got to come up here every so often--"

"Oh, darling, darling, and I've always told you, so carefully, that you
were absolutely free. I just wanted you to come around when you were
tired and wanted to talk to me, or when you could enjoy our parties--"

She was so reasonable, she was so gently right! It took him an hour to
make his escape, with nothing settled and everything horribly settled.
In a barren freedom of icy Northern wind he sighed, "Thank God that's
over! Poor Tanis, poor darling decent Tanis! But it is over. Absolute!
I'm free!"

 When Myra returns home, Babbitt tries his best to be attentive and warm. He finds it difficult, however, to restrain his impatience and irritability when he is in Myra's company. He is torn between wanting to be a good husband and also wanting to continue his relationship with Tanis and her friends. Babbitt reassesses his wife in the light of all that has happened, and he discovers, to his surprise, that she too is an individual and a worthwhile human being. This realization, though, does not ease the situation. The Babbitts have frequent disagreements. One Sunday afternoon, Myra induces him to come to a meeting of the American New Thought League. Babbitt attends, but is far less inspired than she anticipated. After the meeting, they quarrel violently. Myra accuses him of having become callous and inconsiderate. Babbitt guiltily denies the charge, and he pities her bewilderment. He begins to wonder whether his new way of life has any real value, and to what end it will lead him. Thus, he apologizes to Myra and silently vows not to see Tanis anymore. During the next few days, Babbitt strictly adheres to his decision. Tanis telephones him at the office, but his responses are brusque and vague. She writes him a letter and asks him to pay her a visit. Babbitt does not want to go, but he finally keeps the appointment. At Tanis' apartment, she asks Babbitt's forgiveness for anything she may have done to offend him, but it is too late. Babbitt sees her now as a foolish middle-aged woman who no longer attracts him. He does not dislike her, but sees no point in continuing their relationship. Despite her pleas, Babbitt bids Tanis farewell and leaves.

