Page:Lewis - Babbitt.djvu/344

334 was watching him, he was filled with exultant visions of Tanis.

"Do you think I'd better go?" she said sharply.

"You've got to decide, honey; I can't."

She turned away, sighing, and his forehead was damp.

Till she went, four days later, she was curiously still, he cumbrously affectionate. Her train left at noon. As he saw it grow small beyond the train-shed he longed to hurry to Tanis.

"No, by golly, I won't do that!" he vowed. "I won't go near her for a week!"

But he was at her flat at four.

He who had once controlled or seemed to control his life in a progress unimpassioned but diligent and sane was for that fortnight borne on a current of desire and very bad whisky and all the complications of new acquaintances, those furious new intimates who demand so much more attention than old friends. Each morning he gloomily recognized his idiocies of the evening before. With his head throbbing, his tongue and lips stinging from cigarettes, he incredulously counted the number of drinks he had taken, and groaned, "I got to quit!" He had ceased saying, "I will quit!" for however resolute he might be at dawn, he could not, for a single evening, check his drift.

He had met Tanis's friends; he had, with the ardent haste of the Midnight People, who drink and dance and rattle and are ever afraid to be silent, been adopted as a member of her group, which they called "The Bunch." He first met them after a day when he had worked particularly hard and when he hoped to be quiet with Tanis and slowly sip her admiration.

From down the hall he could hear shrieks and the grind of a phonograph. As Tanis opened the door he saw fantastic