late afternoon was sauntering with his friend among the booths in the
company of two suspicions looking women. With these same women the pair
of revellers drove off in top buggies just before dusk, and vanished in
the direction of the open country.



CHAPTER VII.


Babcock returned to his home twenty-four hours later like a whipped cur.
He was disgusted with himself. It seemed to him incredible that he
should have fallen so low. He had sinned against his wife and his own
self-respect without excuse; for it was no excuse that he had let
himself be led to drink too much. His heart ached and his cheek burned
at the recollection of his two days of debauchery. What was to be done?
If only he were able to cut this ugly sore in his soul out with a knife
and have done with it forever! But that was impossible. It stared him in
the face, a haunting reality. In his distress he asked himself whether
he would not go to Mr. Glynn and make a clean breast of it; but his
practical instincts answered him that he would none the less have made a
beast of himself. He held his head between his hands, and stared
dejectedly at his desk. Some relief came to him at last only from the
reflection that it was a single fault, and that it need never--it should
never be repeated. Selma need not know, and he would henceforth avoid
all such temptations. Terrible as it was, it was a slip, not a
deliberate fault, and his love for his wife was not in question.

Thus reasoning, he managed by the third day after his return to reach a
less despondent frame of mind. While busy writing in his office a lady