as himself. All
of them accepted with relief the suggestion of bridge.

Babbitt recovered from the feeling of being boiled. He won at bridge.
He was again able to endure Vergil Gunch's inexorable heartiness. But
he pictured loafing with Paul Riesling beside a lake in Maine. It was as
overpowering and imaginative as homesickness. He had never seen Maine,
yet he beheld the shrouded mountains, the tranquil lake of evening.
"That boy Paul's worth all these ballyhooing highbrows put together," he
muttered; and, "I'd like to get away from--everything."

Even Louetta Swanson did not rouse him.

Mrs. Swanson was pretty and pliant. Babbitt was not an analyst of women,
except as to their tastes in Furnished Houses to Rent. He divided them
into Real Ladies, Working Women, Old Cranks, and Fly Chickens. He mooned
over their charms but he was of opinion that all of them (save the women
of his own family) were "different" and "mysterious." Yet he had known
by instinct that Louetta Swanson could be approached. Her eyes and lips
were moist. Her face tapered from a broad forehead to a pointed chin,
her mouth was thin but strong and avid, and between her brows were two
outcurving and passionate wrinkles. She was thirty, perhaps, or younger.
Gossip had never touched her, but every man naturally and instantly rose
to flirtatiousness when he spoke to her, and every woman watched her
with stilled blankness.

Between games, sitting on the davenport, Babbitt spoke to her with the
requisite gallantry, that sonorous Floral Heights gallantry which is not
flirtation but a terrified flight from it: "You're looking like a new
soda-fountain to night, Louetta."

"Am I?"

"Ole Eddie kind of on the rampage."

"Yes. I get so sick of it."

"Well, when you get tired of hubby, you can run off with Uncle George."

"If I ran away--Oh, well--"

"Anybody ever tell you your hands are awful pretty?"

She looked down at them, she pulled the lace of her sleeves over
them, but otherwise she did not heed him. She was lost in unexpressed
imaginings.

Babbitt was too languid this evening to pursue his duty of being
a captivating (though strictly moral) male. He ambled back to the
bridge-tables. He was not much thrilled when Mrs. Frink, a small
twittering woman, proposed that they "try and do some spiritualism and
table-tipping--you know Chum can make the spirits come--honest, he just
scares me!"

The ladies of the party had not emerged all evening, but