IV

Babbitt lay abed at his hotel, imagining the Zenith Athletic Club asking
him, "What kind of a time d'you have in Chicago?" and his answering,
"Oh, fair; ran around with Sir Gerald Doak a lot;" picturing himself
meeting Lucile McKelvey and admonishing her, "You're all right, Mrs.
Mac, when you aren't trying to pull this highbrow pose. It's just as
Gerald Doak says to me in Chicago--oh, yes, Jerry's an old friend of
mine--the wife and I are thinking of running over to England to stay
with Jerry in his castle, next year--and he said to me, 'Georgie, old
bean, I like Lucile first-rate, but you and me, George, we got to make
her get over this highty-tighty hooptediddle way she's got."

But that evening a thing happened which wrecked his pride.


V

At the Regency Hotel cigar-counter he fell to talking with a salesman
of pianos, and they dined together. Babbitt was filled with friendliness
and well-being. He enjoyed the gorgeousness of the dining-room: the
chandeliers, the looped brocade curtains, the portraits of French kings
against panels of gilded oak. He enjoyed the crowd: pretty women, good
solid fellows who were "liberal spenders."

He gasped. He stared, and turned away, and stared again. Three tables
off, with a doubtful sort of woman, a woman at once coy and withered,
was Paul Riesling, and Paul was supposed to be in Akron, selling
tar-roofing. The woman was tapping his hand, mooning at him and