oyees, and let me tell you it doesn't pay to
antagonize--"

At the drab wooden house in which she lived he said good-night briefly
and amiably, but as the taxicab drove off he was praying "Oh, my God!"

CHAPTER XXV

I

HE awoke to stretch cheerfully as he listened to the sparrows, then to
remember that everything was wrong; that he was determined to go astray,
and not in the least enjoying the process. Why, he wondered, should he
be in rebellion? What was it all about? "Why not be sensible; stop all
this idiotic running around, and enjoy himself with his family,
his business, the fellows at the club?" What was he getting out of
rebellion? Misery and shame--the shame of being treated as an offensive
small boy by a ragamuffin like Ida Putiak! And yet--Always he came back
to "And yet." Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with
a world which, once doubted, became absurd.

Only, he assured himself, he was "through with this chasing after
girls."

By noontime he was not so sure even of that. If in Miss McGoun, Louetta
Swanson, and Ida he had failed to find the lady kind and lovely, it did
not prove that she did not exist. He was hunted by the ancient thought
that somewhere must exist the not impossible she who would understand
him, value him, and make him happy.

II

Mrs. Babbitt returned in August.

On her previous absences he had missed her reassuring buzz and of her
arrival he had made a fete. Now, though he dared not hurt her by letting
a hint of it appear in his letters, he was sorry that she was coming
before he had found himself, and he was embarrassed by the need of
meeting her and looking joyful.

He loitered down to the station; he studied the summer-resort posters,
lest he have to speak to acquaintances and expose his uneasiness. But
he was well trained. When the train clanked in he was out on the cement
platform, peering into the chair-cars, and as he saw her in the line of
passengers moving toward the vestibule he waved his hat. At the door he
embraced her, and announced, "Well, well, well, well, by golly, you look
fine, you look fine." Then he was aware of Tinka. Here was something,
this child with her absurd little nose and lively eyes, that loved him,
believed him great, and as he clasped her, lifted and held her till she
squealed, he was for the moment come back to his old steady self.

Tinka sat beside him in the car, with one hand on the steering-wheel,
pretending to h