BABBITT
269
and sudden and overwhelming new testimony. Actually, the trial occupied less than fifteen minutes, largely filled with the evidence of doctors that Zilla would recover and that Paul must have been temporarily insane. Next day Paul was sentenced to three years in the State Penitentiary and taken off—quite undramatically, not handcuffed, merely plodding in a tired way beside a cheerful deputy sheriff—and after saying good-by to him at the station Babbitt returned to his office to realize that he faced a world which, without Paul, was meaningless.
