Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (275 page)

Up
in
his
room
he
saw
his
reflection
in
the
familiar
mirror—he
went closer
and
examined
his
own
face
with
anxiety,
comparing
it
after
a moment
with
a
photograph
of
himself
in
uniform
taken
just
before the
war.

"Good
Lord!"
he
said
aloud.
The
process
was
continuing.
There was
no
doubt
of
it—he
looked
now
like
a
man
of
thirty.
Instead
of being
delighted,
he
was
uneasy—he
was
growing
younger.
He
had hitherto
hoped
that
once
he
reached
a
bodily
age
equivalent
to
his age
in
years,
the
grotesque
phenomenon
which
had
marked
his
birth would
cease
to
function.
He
shuddered.
His
destiny
seemed
to
him awful,
incredible.

When
he
came
downstairs
Hildegarde
was
waiting
for
him.
She appeared
annoyed,
and
he
wondered
if
she
had
at
last
discovered
that there
was
something
amiss.
It
was
with
an
effort
to
relieve
the
tension between
them
that
he
broached
the
matter
at
dinner
in
what
he considered
a
delicate
way.

"Well,"
he
remarked
lightly,
"everybody
says
I
look
younger
than ever."

Hildegarde
regarded
him
with
scorn.
She
sniffed.
"Do
you
think it's
anything
to
boast
about?"

"I'm
not
boasting,"
he
asserted
uncomfortably.

She
sniffed
again.
"The
idea,"
she
said,
and
after
a
moment:
"I should
think
you'd
have
enough
pride
to
stop
it."

"How
can
I?"
he
demanded.

"I'm
not
going
to
argue
with
you,"
she
retorted.
"But
there's
a
right way
of
doing
things
and
a
wrong
way.
If
you've
made
up
your
mind to
be
different
from
everybody
else,
I
don't
suppose
I
can
stop
you, but
I
really
don't
think
it's
very
considerate."

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

"You
can
too.
You're
simply
stubborn.
You
think
you
don't
want to
be
like
anyone
else.
You
always
have
been
that
way,
and
you
always will
be.
But
just
think
how
it
would
be
if
everyone
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
gayety
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.