Babbitt’s evenings were barren then, and he found comfort only in Paul’s second cousin, Myra Thompson, a sleek and gentle girl who showed her capacity by agreeing with the ardent young Babbitt that of course he was going to be governor some day.  Where Zilla mocked him as a country boy, Myra said indignantly that he was ever so much solider than the young dandies who had been born in the great city of Zenith—­an ancient settlement in 1897, one hundred and five years old, with two hundred thousand population, the queen and wonder of all the state and, to the Catawba boy, George Babbitt, so vast and thunderous and luxurious that he was flattered to know a girl ennobled by birth in Zenith.

Of love there was no talk between them.  He knew that if he was to study law he could not marry for years; and Myra was distinctly a Nice Girl—­one didn’t kiss her, one didn’t “think about her that way at all” unless one was going to marry her.  But she was a dependable companion.  She was always ready to go skating, walking; always content to hear his discourses on the great things he was going to do, the distressed poor whom he would defend against the Unjust Rich, the speeches he would make at Banquets, the inexactitudes of popular thought which he would correct.

One evening when he was weary and soft-minded, he saw that she had been weeping.  She had been left out of a party given by Zilla.  Somehow her head was on his shoulder and he was kissing away the tears—­and she raised her head to say trustingly, “Now that we’re engaged, shall we be married soon or shall we wait?”

Engaged?  It was his first hint of it.  His affection for this brown tender woman thing went cold and fearful, but he could not hurt her, could not abuse her trust.  He mumbled something about waiting, and escaped.  He walked for an hour, trying to find a way of telling her that it was a mistake.  Often, in the month after, he got near to telling her, but it was pleasant to have a girl in his arms, and less and less could he insult her by blurting that he didn’t love her.  He himself had no doubt.  The evening before his marriage was an agony, and the morning wild with the desire to flee.

She made him what is known as a Good Wife.  She was loyal, industrious, and at rare times merry.  She passed from a feeble disgust at their closer relations into what promised to be ardent affection, but it drooped into bored routine.  Yet she existed only for him and for the children, and she was as sorry, as worried as himself, when he gave up the law and trudged on in a rut of listing real estate.

“Poor kid, she hasn’t had much better time than I have,” Babbitt reflected, standing in the dark sun-parlor.  “But—­I wish I could ’ve had a whirl at law and politics.  Seen what I could do.  Well—­Maybe I’ve made more money as it is.”

He returned to the living-room but before he settled down he smoothed his wife’s hair, and she glanced up, happy and somewhat surprised.