Thus reasoning, he managed by the third day after his return to reach a less despondent frame of mind.  While busy writing in his office a lady was announced, and looking up he encountered the meretricious smile of the courtesan with whom he had forgotten himself.  She had taken a fancy to her victim, and having learned that he was well to do, she had come in order to establish, if possible, on a more permanent basis, her relations with him.  She was a young woman, who had been drifting from place to place, and whose professional inclination for a protector was heightened by the liking which she had conceived for him.  Babcock recalled in her smile merely his shame, and regarded her reappearance as effrontery.  He was blind to her prettiness and her sentimental mood.  He asked her roughly what she wanted, and rising from his chair, he bade her be gone before she had time to answer.  Nine out of ten women of her class would have taken their dismissal lightly.  Some might have answered back in tones loud enough to enlighten the clerks, and thus have accomplished a pretty revenge in the course of retreat.  This particular Lesbian was in no humor to be harshly treated.  She was a little desperate and Babcock had pleased her.  It piqued her to be treated in such a fashion; accordingly, she held her ground and sat down.  She tried upon him, alternately, irony and pathos.  He was angry but confused under the first, he became savage and merciless under the second, throwing back in her teeth the suggestion of her fondness, and stigmatizing her coarsely.  Then she became angry in her turn—­angry as a woman whose proffered love is spurned.  The method for revenge was obvious, and she told him plainly what she intended.  His wife should know at once how her husband passed his time during her absence.  She had posted herself, and she saw that her shaft hurt.  Babcock winced, but mad and incredulous, he threatened her with arrest and drove her from the room.  She went out smiling, but with an ominous look in her eyes, the remembrance of which made him ask himself now and again if she could be vicious enough, or fool enough, to keep her promise.  He dismissed the idea as improbable; still the bare chance worried him.  Selma was to arrive early the next morning, and he had reconciled himself to the conclusion that she need never know, and that he would henceforth be a faithful husband.  Had he not given an earnest of his good faith in his reception of his visitor?  Surely, no such untoward and unnatural accident would dash the cup of returning happiness from his lips.  A more clever man would have gone straight to police headquarters, instead of trusting to chance.

A night’s rest reassured him as to the idleness of the threat, so that he was able to welcome Selma at the railroad station with a comparatively light heart.  She was in high spirits over the success of her expedition, and yet graciously ready to admit that she was glad to return home—­meaning thereby, to her own bed and bathing facilities; but the general term seemed to poor Lewis a declaration of wifely devotion.  He went to his business with the mien of a man who had passed through an ordeal and is beginning life again; but when he returned at night, as soon as he beheld Selma, he suspected what had happened.