"But, Hildegarde, I can't help it."

"You can too. You're simply stubborn. You think you don't want to be
like any one else. You always have been that way, and you always will
be. But just think how it would be if every one else looked at things
as you do--what would the world be like?"

As this was an inane and unanswerable argument Benjamin made no reply,
and from that time on a chasm began to widen between them. He wondered
what possible fascination she had ever exercised over him.

To add to the breach, he found, as the new century gathered headway,
that his thirst for gaiety grew stronger. Never a party of any kind in
the city of Baltimore but he was there, dancing with the prettiest of
the young married women, chatting with the most popular of the
debutantes, and finding their company charming, while his wife, a
dowager of evil omen, sat among the chaperons, now in haughty
disapproval, and now following him with solemn, puzzled, and
reproachful eyes.

"Look!" people would remark. "What a pity! A young fellow that age
tied to a woman of forty-five. He must be twenty years younger than
his wife." They had forgotten--as people inevitably forget--that back
in 1880 their mammas and papas had also remarked about this same
ill-matched pair.

Benjamin's growing unhappiness at home was compensated for by his many
new interests. He took up golf and made a great success of it. He went
in for dancing: in 1906 he was an expert at "The Boston," and in 1908
he was considered proficient at the "Maxine," while in 1909 his
"Castle Walk" was the envy of every young man in town.

His social activities, of course, interfered to some extent with his
business, but then he had worked hard at wholesale hardware for
twenty-five years and felt that he could soon hand it on to his son,
Roscoe, who had recently graduated from Harvard.

He and his son were, in fact, often mistaken for each other. This
pleased Benjamin--he soon forgot the insidious fear which had come
over him on his return from the Spanish-American War, and grew to take
a naive pleasure in his appearance. There was only one fly in the
delicious ointment--he hated to appear in public with his wife.
Hildegarde was almost fifty, and the sight of her made him feel
absurd....

9

One September day in 1910--a few years after Roger Button & Co.,
Wholesale Hardware, had been handed over to young Roscoe Button--a
man, apparently about twenty years old, entered himself