in Prague. Furthermore, she struggles to accept that Charlie has conquered his alcoholism. His confession of being in the Ritz Hotel bar heightens her suspicions, and the arrival of the sarcastic and drunken Lorraine and Duncan confirms her worst fears.

Lorraine Quarrles is described as "a lovely, pale blond of thirty" who Charlie used to socialize with during his drinking days before the stock market crash. Although she is married, she has left her husband in America and is accompanied by Duncan Schaeffer, whom she casually calls "Dunc," throughout the story. She appears to be drawn to Charlie, but while he feels nothing for her now, she was "very attractive" to him during his days of excess. Now, she is one of the "ghosts" from his past: "blurred, worn away."

Charlie has cut off any emotional ties he once had with Lorraine and dismisses her coldly as "one of a crowd that had helped them make months into days in the lavish times of three years ago." When he avoids Lorraine and Duncan's attempts to rekindle their friendship, he views her as a kind of emotional vampire, aware of his self-control and sobriety, and wishing to drag him back into the alcoholic haze she has not escaped: "they wanted to see him, because he was stronger than they were now, because they wanted to draw a certain sustenance from his strength." Lorraine and Duncan follow Charlie and Honoria to the vaudeville and eventually convince him to share a drink with them. Lorraine confesses to Charlie that since the crash, she and her husband have been "poor as hell" and that her husband has given her "two hundred a month and told me I could do my worst on that."

At the Peters' home, as Charlie attempts to secure his future with Honoria, Lorraine appears like a spectral, disembodied "voice" that "develops under the light into... Lorraine Quarrles." She has come to do her "worst," drunkenly disrupting the moment when Marion Peters is agreeing to let Charlie have custody of his daughter. She mocks Charlie for being so "solemn," and when he remains unresponsive, she angrily reminds him of a time he sought her out early one morning, desperate for a drink.

Charlie Wales is the main character in "Babylon Revisited" and serves as the perspective through which readers experience the story. A 35-year-old Irish-American businessman from Vermont, Charlie relocated to Paris with his wife, Helen, and their daughter, Honoria, to enjoy the benefits of his successful stock investments during Wall Street's booming late 1920s. The family traveled across Europe, indulging in their newfound wealth until Charlie's drinking, unemployment, arguments with Helen, and the negative influence of money, along with their new social circle, began to unravel their marriage. One night, following a quarrel, Charlie locks Helen out of their apartment during a storm. Subsequently, he checks into a sanitarium to address his alcoholism, discovers that he has lost most of his money in the stock market crash, and, in a gesture to Helen, transfers legal custody of Honoria to Helen's sister, Marion. After Helen's death due to heart problems, Charlie moves to Prague to rebuild his life. A year and a half later, now successful and seemingly sober, he returns to Paris to reclaim custody of Honoria.

Throughout the story, Charlie is portrayed as a devoted and loving father who deeply misses his daughter and feels immense guilt and shame over his past actions. He is a talkative man with many connections, enjoys the comforts that money can bring, and has a generous nature, often buying Honoria whatever she desires and assisting his brother-in-law in finding a better job. He also exhibits self-discipline, managing to control his lingering alcohol dependency and restraining his natural impulse to defend himself when Marion criticizes him for his previous mistakes. Once a strict parent, he now wishes to spoil his daughter. However, his newfound leniency masks a moralistic side that makes him recoil in horror at the "utter irresponsibility" of his life before the crash. He asserts his belief in "character" as the "eternally valuable element" and thoughtfully considers his responsibility to give Honoria love, "but not too much love, for he knew the injury that a father can do to a daughter."

While Charlie's strengths include self-control, love, and generosity, his weaknesses are rooted in alcoholism and guilt. During his bouts of drinking, he allowed his marriage to collapse, left his wife stranded in the snow, had an affair with Lorraine Quarrles, and squandered his money in Parisian clubs. Now seemingly sober, he is burdened by the weight of his past and frequently revisits memories of his wife, her death, and his role in it.

Charlie's guilt is embodied by Marion Peters, who voices every doubt he harbors about himself. These doubts may be well-founded: Charlie naively gives the Ritz barman the Peters's address to relay to a "ghost" from his drinking days, his generosity indicates a lingering obsession with the power of money, he repeatedly returns to the decadent Paris scenes of his pre-crash "nightmare," he struggles to exclude Lorraine and Duncan from his new life, and during his visits to the Peters, he consciously manipulates his behavior and conversation to earn the "points" necessary to regain custody of Honoria.

However, Charlie's recognition of his flaws and his determination to achieve his goals may ultimately lead to his success. At the story's end, he reassures himself, "He would come back some day; they couldn't make him pay forever.... He was absolutely sure Helen wouldn't have wanted him to be so alone." Although temporarily defeated, the resolve and conviction in Charlie's final thoughts suggest he is a survivor.

Alix
Alix, a bartender at the Hotel Ritz, is a connection to Charlie Wales's wild Parisian days before the 1929 stock market crash. At the beginning of the story, he updates Charlie on the unfortunate fates of his former Paris associates—Mr. Campbell, George Hardt, "the Snow Bird," Duncan Schaeffer, and Claude Fessenden. One is ill, another has returned to the United States after losing everything in the crash, and a third has been banned from the Ritz for trying to pass a bad check.

Alix is among several characters who challenge Charlie's determination to stay sober. He offers Charlie a drink at both the start and conclusion of the story, but Charlie refuses each time.

Paul
Paul, the head bartender at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, witnessed Charlie's wild lifestyle before his wife's death. He profited greatly from the 1920s bull market and used his earnings to buy luxuries like a country house and a "custom-built" car, which he drives to work but parks a block away to maintain his modest image. Paul appears at the end of the story when Charlie angrily returns to the Ritz to find Lorraine Quarrles and Duncan Schaeffer, whose drunken appearance at the Peters' has disrupted Charlie's plans to regain custody of his daughter, Honoria. Like Alix at the beginning, Paul updates Charlie on the post-crash lives of his former social companions. "I heard that you lost a lot in the crash," he tells Charlie. "I did," Charlie replies, "but I lost everything I wanted in the boom." Paul misinterprets Charlie's response as a reference to financial mistakes. "Selling short," he suggests, referring to the practice of betting on the decline of a stock's price. Charlie's reply, "Something like that," continues the financial metaphor but hints at deeper personal losses during the boom years.

Duncan Schaeffer
Duncan Schaeffer, a college friend of Charlie's, joined him in his self-destructive lifestyle during his three-year Parisian debauchery before the 1929 crash. Charlie inquires about him with the Ritz bartender in the opening scene. Later, while dining with his daughter, Charlie encounters Duncan, who is with another of his former party friends, Lorraine Quarrles. Duncan repeatedly invites Charlie to join them, but Charlie declines, eventually explaining that he and Honoria are headed to the vaudeville show at the Empire.

Charlie regards Duncan's relentless sociability with deep mistrust: "They liked him because he was functioning, because he was serious; they wanted to see him, because he was stronger than they were now, because they wanted to draw a certain sustenance from his strength." When Charlie reveals that he and Honoria will be at the Empire, it jeopardizes his resolve to detach from his past, as Duncan and Lorraine follow them there. At the Empire, Duncan offers Charlie a drink, and worn down by Duncan's persistence, Charlie eventually gives in.

Later, Duncan and Lorraine, inebriated, intrude on Charlie at the Peters' apartment, severely undermining Charlie's efforts to regain custody of his daughter.

Helen Wales
Though Charlie's deceased wife Helen is physically absent from the story, she remains the central "ghost out of the past" with whom Charlie grapples as he tries to create a new future for himself and Honoria. Much like Fitzgerald's tumultuous relationship with his wife Zelda, Charlie and Helen's marriage was emotionally volatile. After Charlie amasses a fortune in the stock market, he leaves his job and relocates with Helen and Honoria from Vermont to Paris. They travel across Europe, "throwing money away." In Paris, they begin to associate with a wild, disreputable crowd and frequently quarrel. One February night, an argument in a Paris nightclub culminates with Helen kissing another man. Enraged, Charlie storms out alone and angrily locks their apartment door behind him. Helen returns an hour later, and unable to get inside, she wanders through a snowstorm to her sister's apartment. Although she avoids pneumonia and they make a half-hearted attempt at reconciliation, their marriage and her health suffer irreparable damage. While Charlie recuperates in a sanitarium from his alcoholism, he grants custody of Honoria to Helen's sister as a gesture to Helen, but Helen dies shortly afterward.

As Charlie edges closer to reclaiming Honoria, Helen's ghost continues to haunt him. On the night Charlie learns that Marion has agreed to let him have Honoria, Helen appears to him in a dream, giving her approval for Honoria to move with him to Prague. Following Helen's singular appearance in the story, Charlie's fate takes a dramatic turn. The door he locked, shutting Helen out in the snow many months before, is now replaced by the open "door of the world." Yet, as he joyfully envisions his future with Honoria, sorrowful memories of Helen suddenly disrupt his happiness, leading him to think he must not love Honoria "too much." Later that day, after Lorraine and Duncan's disastrous intrusion at the Peters' dashes Charlie's hopes for a life with Honoria, Charlie sits in the Ritz bar, tormented by memories of his life with Helen and their debauchery, and by guilt for locking her out months before. Despite the day's catastrophic events, the story concludes with Charlie reassuring himself that Helen "wouldn't have wanted him to be so alone."

Honoria Wales
Honoria Wales, Charlie's nine-year-old daughter, is at the heart of the story's custody battle. She adores her father, welcoming his arrival in Paris with joyful shrieks and open arms. Described as a lovely girl, Honoria seems to get along well with the Peters family and their children. Despite this, she is thrilled by the idea of living with her father in Prague after not seeing him for over ten months. During lunch at Le Grand Vatel, she eats her vegetables willingly and looks forward to their trip to the vaudeville later. However, her spirits dampen when Charlie offers to buy her anything in the toy store. Although she likes the doll he gives her, she remarks, "I've got lots of things. And we're not rich anymore, are we?"

Honoria excels at school and, when asked, admits she prefers Uncle Lincoln over Aunt Marion. Keen to live with her father, she asserts, "I don't really need much taking care of anymore. I do everything for myself," and speculates that she doesn't live with her father because "mamma's dead." Despite Lorraine and Duncan's condescending behavior towards her, Honoria remains polite. At the theater, Charlie observes that she is "already an individual with a code of her own" and feels "absorbed by the desire of putting a little of himself into her before she crystallized utterly." When asked about her mother, Honoria says she loved her very much but now loves her father "better than anybody." When Charlie suggests that one day she will fall in love, get married, and forget she "ever had a daddy," she responds, "Yes, that's true," showing her understanding of adult life. Nevertheless, her affection for her father remains unwavering.