et sloppy, like some women.... No, no, no! She's
a real cultured lady. One of the brightest little women I've met these
many moons. Understands about Public Topics and--But, darn it, why
didn't I try? . . . Tanis!"

III

He was harassed and puzzled by it, but he found that he was turning
toward youth, as youth. The girl who especially disturbed him--though he
had never spoken to her--was the last manicure girl on the right in the
Pompeian Barber Shop. She was small, swift, black-haired, smiling. She
was nineteen, perhaps, or twenty. She wore thin salmon-colored blouses
which exhibited her shoulders and her black-ribboned camisoles.

He went to the Pompeian for his fortnightly hair-trim. As always, he
felt disloyal at deserting his neighbor, the Reeves Building Barber
Shop. Then, for the first time, he overthrew his sense of guilt.
"Doggone it, I don't have to go here if I don't want to! I don't own the
Reeves Building! These barbers got nothing on me! I'll doggone well get
my hair cut where I doggone well want to! Don't want to hear anything
more about it! I'm through standing by people--unless I want to. It
doesn't get you anywhere. I'm through!"

The Pompeian Barber Shop was in the basement of the Hotel Thornleigh,
largest and most dynamically modern hotel in Zenith. Curving marble
steps with a rail of polished brass led from the hotel-lobby down to the
barber shop. The interior was of black and white and crimson tiles,
with a sensational ceiling of burnished gold, and a fountain in which
a massive nymph forever emptied a scarlet cornucopia. Forty barbers
and nine manicure girls worked desperately, and at the door six colored
porters lurked to greet the customers, to care reverently for their hats
and collars, to lead them to a place of waiting where, on a carpet like
a tropic isle in the stretch of white stone floor, were a dozen leather
chairs and a table heaped with magazines.

Babbitt's porter was an obsequious gray-haired negro who did him an
honor highly esteemed in the land of Zenith--greeted him by name. Yet
Babbitt was unhappy. His bright particular manicure girl was engaged.
She was doing the nails of an overdressed man and giggling with him.
Babbitt hated him. He thought of waiting, but to stop the powerful
system of the Pompeian was inconceivable, and he was instantly wafted
into a chair.

About him was luxury, rich and delicate. One votary was having a
violet-ray facial treatment, the next an oil