Each morning his head ached a little less.  A bad head for drinks had been his safeguard, but the safeguard was crumbling.  Presently he could be drunk at dawn, yet not feel particularly wretched in his conscience—­or in his stomach—­when he awoke at eight.  No regret, no desire to escape the toil of keeping up with the arduous merriment of the Bunch, was so great as his feeling of social inferiority when he failed to keep up.  To be the “livest” of them was as much his ambition now as it had been to excel at making money, at playing golf, at motor-driving, at oratory, at climbing to the McKelvey set.  But occasionally he failed.

He found that Pete and the other young men considered the Bunch too austerely polite and the Carrie who merely kissed behind doors too embarrassingly monogamic.  As Babbitt sneaked from Floral Heights down to the Bunch, so the young gallants sneaked from the proprieties of the Bunch off to “times” with bouncing young women whom they picked up in department stores and at hotel coatrooms.  Once Babbitt tried to accompany them.  There was a motor car, a bottle of whisky, and for him a grubby shrieking cash-girl from Parcher and Stein’s.  He sat beside her and worried.  He was apparently expected to “jolly her along,” but when she sang out, “Hey, leggo, quit crushing me cootie-garage,” he did not quite know how to go on.  They sat in the back room of a saloon, and Babbitt had a headache, was confused by their new slang looked at them benevolently, wanted to go home, and had a drink—­a good many drinks.

Two evenings after, Fulton Bemis, the surly older man of the Bunch, took Babbitt aside and grunted, “Look here, it’s none of my business, and God knows I always lap up my share of the hootch, but don’t you think you better watch yourself?  You’re one of these enthusiastic chumps that always overdo things.  D’ you realize you’re throwing in the booze as fast as you can, and you eat one cigarette right after another?  Better cut it out for a while.”

Babbitt tearfully said that good old Fult was a prince, and yes, he certainly would cut it out, and thereafter he lighted a cigarette and took a drink and had a terrific quarrel with Tanis when she caught him being affectionate with Carrie Nork.

Next morning he hated himself that he should have sunk into a position where a fifteenth-rater like Fulton Bemis could rebuke him.  He perceived that, since he was making love to every woman possible, Tanis was no longer his one pure star, and he wondered whether she had ever been anything more to him than A Woman.  And if Bemis had spoken to him, were other people talking about him?  He suspiciously watched the men at the Athletic Club that noon.  It seemed to him that they were uneasy.  They had been talking about him then?  He was angry.  He became belligerent.  He not only defended Seneca Doane but even made fun of the Y. M. C. A, Vergil Gunch was rather brief in his answers.

Afterward Babbitt was not angry.  He was afraid.  He did not go to the next lunch of the Boosters’ Club but hid in a cheap restaurant, and, while he munched a ham-and-egg sandwich and sipped coffee from a cup on the arm of his chair, he worried.