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Mrs. Babbitt is annoyed and suspicious when Babbitt returns from his visit with Tanis. Babbitt becomes angry enough to admit that, yes, he has been seeing another woman. It\'s Mrs. Babbitt\'s fault that he has, he says; she makes him feel dull and old.
Overwhelmed by this attack, Mrs. Babbitt mournfully concedes that perhaps she has been slightly at fault. Babbitt takes this apology as evidence that he is completely guiltless. Only briefly does he admit that he has been a bully--and as usual, this moment of humility doesn\'t last. He needs to be free, he tells himself--free of his wife, of Tanis, of everyone.
But Babbitt won\'t be allowed that freedom. The next day the social consequences of his rebellion become clearer. At the Boosters\' Club lunch a congressman speaks against foreign immigration. The speech is a \"bunch of hot air,\" but when Babbitt voices this truth, his friends glare disapprovingly at him. Particularly indignant is the famous surgeon, Dr. A. I. Dilling. As Dr. Dilling glowers, Babbitt backs down.
The next day, Dilling, Charles McKelvey, and Colonel Rutherford Snow, owner of the Zenith newspaper, barge into Babbitt\'s office. They deliver an ultimatum: Babbitt must join the Good Citizens\' League. Babbitt, hardly a sophisticated political thinker, can\'t even remember why he refused to join the league when Vergil Gunch first asked him. But he doesn\'t want to be bullied into anything.
Now you can begin to see the full price of refusing to conform in Zenith. Colonel Snow points out that Babbitt and his father-in-law have long been part of the group who profitably (and, we know, not very honestly) ran the city. If Babbitt wants to turn against that group and run with a \"loose\" crowd, side with \"radicals\" like Seneca Doane, he is free to do that, Colonel Snow says. But if he does, his old friends will make life very difficult for him.
Soon enough, Babbitt sees the ways in which his old friends can injure him, as they begin the \"social boycott\" Vergil Gunch warned of earlier. Mrs. Babbitt pressures her husband as well, asking why he won\'t join the league when \"all the nicest people in town belong.\" Babbitt defends his actions with surprising eloquence: the league stands for suppression of free speech and free thought. But to Mrs. Babbitt her husband\'s defense of these American ideals sounds as foreign and as dangerous as the socialist opinions of their German furnace man.
Babbitt\'s feeling of isolation grows. William Eathorne ignores his morning greeting. Henry T. Thompson admits that the Good Citizens\' League is a fraudulent group fighting plots that don\'t exist, but warns Babbitt if he doesn\'t go along he\'ll be labeled an unstable crank. The truth of Thompson\'s warning is proven when Conrad Lyte refuses to do business with Babbitt and when the Zenith Street Traction Company takes its latest corrupt deal to a competing firm.
By now Babbitt is so frightened he\'d gladly join the GCL if invited, but no further invitation is extended. He\'s no longer asked to poker parties; he\'s ignored by the Chamber of Commerce. Even his secretary, Miss McGoun, quits. In desperation he visits Tanis, but she is cool and aloof to the man who so recently deserted her. Mrs. Babbitt offers no comfort. Only Ted and Eunice Littlefield support him, naively impressed that Babbitt has stood up to Zenith and unaware of the punishment he is suffering.
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