“This is Mrs. Judique. Do you remember me? You drove me up here to the Cavendish Apartments and helped me find such a nice flat.” “Sure! Bet I remember! What can I do for you?” “Why, it’s just a little-- I don’t know that I ought to bother you, but the janitor doesn’t seem to be able to fix it. You know my flat is on the top floor, and with these autumn rains the roof is beginning to leak, and I’d be awfully glad if--” “Sure! I’ll come up and take a look at it.” Nervously, “When do you expect to be in?” “Why, I’m in every morning.” “Be in this afternoon, in an hour or so?” “Ye-es. Perhaps I could give you a cup of tea. I think I ought to, after all your trouble.” “Fine! I’ll run up there soon as I can get away.” He meditated, “Now there’s a woman that’s got refinement, savvy, _class_! ‘After all your trouble--give you a cup of tea.’ She’d appreciate a fellow. I’m a fool, but I’m not such a bad cuss, get to know me. And not so much a fool as they think!” The great strike was over, the strikers beaten. Except that Vergil Gunch seemed less cordial, there were no visible effects of Babbitt’s treachery to the clan. The oppressive fear of criticism was gone, but a diffident loneliness remained. Now he was so exhilarated that, to prove he wasn’t, he droned about the office for fifteen minutes, looking at blue-prints, explaining to Miss McGoun that this Mrs. Scott wanted more money for her house--had raised the asking-price--raised it from seven thousand to eighty-five hundred--would Miss McGoun be sure and put it down on the card--Mrs. Scott’s house--raise. When he had thus established himself as a person unemotional and interested only in business, he sauntered out. He took a particularly long time to start his car; he kicked the tires, dusted the glass of the speedometer, and tightened the screws holding the wind-shield spot-light. He drove happily off toward the Bellevue district, conscious of the presence of Mrs. Judique as of a brilliant light on the horizon. The maple leaves had fallen and they lined the gutters of the asphalted streets. It was a day of pale gold and faded green, tranquil and lingering. Babbitt was aware of the meditative day, and of the barrenness of Bellevue--blocks of wooden houses, garages, little shops, weedy lots. “Needs pepping up; needs the touch that people like Mrs. Judique could give a place,” he ruminated, as he rattled through the long, crude, airy streets. The wind rose, enlivening, keen, and in a blaze of well-being he came to the flat of Tanis Judique. She was wearing, when she flutteringly admitted him, a frock of black chiffon cut modestly round at the base of her pretty throat. She seemed to him immensely sophisticated. He glanced at the cretonnes and colored prints in her living-room, and gurgled, “Gosh, you’ve fixed the place nice! Takes a clever woman to know how to make a home, all right!”