eye. Benham, as has been indicated, was in the throes of bustle and
self-improvement. Before the war it had been essentially unimportant.
But the building of a railroad through the town and the discovery of oil
wells in its neighborhood had transformed it in a twinkling into an
active and spirited centre. Selma's new house was on the edge of the
city, in the van of real estate progress, one of a row of small but
ambitious-looking dwellings, over the dark yellow clapboards of which
the architect had let his imagination run rampant in scrolls and
flourishes. There was fancy colored glass in a sort of rose-window over
the front door, and lozenges of fancy glass here and there in the
facade. Each house had a little grass-plot, which Babcock in his case
had made appurtenant to a metal stag, which seemed to him the finishing
touch to a cosey and ornamental home. He had done his best and with all
his heart, and the future was before them.

Babcock found himself radiant over the first experiences of married
life. It was just what he had hoped, only better. His imagination in
entertaining an angel had not been unduly literal, and it was a constant
delight and source of congratulation to him to reflect over his pipe on
the lounge after supper that the charming piece of flesh and blood
sewing or reading demurely close by was the divinity of his domestic
hearth. There she was to smile at him when he came home at night and
enable him to forget the cares and dross of the varnish business. Her
presence across the table added a new zest to every meal and improved
his appetite. In marrying he had expected to cut loose from his bachelor
habits, and he asked for nothing better than to spend every evening
alone with Selma, varied by an occasional evening at the theatre, and a
drive out to the Farleys' now and then for supper. This, with the
regular Sunday service at Rev. Henry Glynn's church, rounded out the
weeks to his perfect satisfaction. He was conscious of feeling that the