mean with women. Zilla may do a lot of rough talking, but she's pretty
shrewd. She'd have the story out of you in no time."

"Well, all right, but--" Babbitt was still pathetic at not being allowed
to play Secret Agent. Paul soothed:

"Course maybe you might tell her you'd been in Akron and seen me there."

"Why, sure, you bet! Don't I have to go look at that candy-store
property in Akron? Don't I? Ain't it a shame I have to stop off there
when I'm so anxious to get home? Ain't it a regular shame? I'll say it
is! I'll say it's a doggone shame!"

"Fine. But for glory hallelujah's sake don't go putting any fancy
fixings on the story. When men lie they always try to make it too
artistic, and that's why women get suspicious. And--Let's have a drink,
Georgie. I've got some gin and a little vermouth."

The Paul who normally refused a second cocktail took a second now, and
a third. He became red-eyed and thick-tongued. He was embarrassingly
jocular and salacious.

In the taxicab Babbitt incredulously found tears crowding into his eyes.

II

He had not told Paul of his plan but he did stop at Akron, between
trains, for the one purpose of sending to Zilla a postcard with "Had to
come here for the day, ran into Paul." In Zenith he called on her.
If for public appearances Zilla was over-coiffed, over-painted,
and resolutely corseted, for private misery she wore a filthy blue
dressing-gown and torn stockings thrust into streaky pink satin mules.
Her face was sunken. She seemed to have but half as much hair as Babbitt
remembered, and that half was stringy. She sat in a rocker amid a debris
of candy-boxes and cheap magazines, and she sounded dolorous when she
did not sound derisive. But Babbitt was exceedingly breezy:

"Well, well, Zil, old dear, having a good loaf while hubby's away?
That's the ideal I'll bet a hat Myra never got up till ten, while I was
in Chicago. Say, could I borrow your thermos--just dropped in to see
if I could borrow your thermos bottle. We're going to have a toboggan
party--want to take some coffee mit. Oh, did you get my card from Akron,
saying I'd run into Paul?"

"Yes. What was he doing?"

"How do you mean?" He unbuttoned his overcoat, sat tentatively on the
arm of a chair.

"You know how I mean!" She slapped the pages of a magazine with an
irritable clatter. "I suppose he was trying to make love to some hotel
waitress or manicure girl or somebody."

"Hang it, you're always letting on th