were content with the present
arrangement, and whether their wives and children were not stifling in
the city at that very moment. He caught a sentence here and there as
he passed. "And, believe me," one was saying, "as soon as he got into
the box he did not do a thing to that fellar from Tiverton--" Ben's
footsteps lagged a little. He was a baseball fan. He almost forgave
the chauffeurs for being content. They seemed to him human beings,
after all.

He approached the house, and, walking past a narrow, unroofed piazza,
he found himself opposite a long window. He looked straight into the
ballroom. The ball was a fancy ball--the best of the season. It was
called a Balkan Ball, which gave all the guests the opportunity of
dressing pretty much as they pleased. The wood of the long paneled
room was golden, and softened the light from the crystal appliques
along the wall, and set off the bright dresses of the dancers as a
gold bowl sets off the colors of fruit.

Every now and then people stepped out on the piazza, and as they did
they became audible to Ben for a few seconds. First, two middle-aged
men, solid, bronzed, laughing rather wickedly together. Ben drew back,
afraid of what he might overhear, but it turned out to be no very
guilty secret. "My dear fellow," one was saying, "I gave him a stroke
a hole, and he's twenty years younger than I am--well, fifteen anyhow.
The trouble with these young men is that they lack--"

Ben never heard what it was that young men lacked.

Next came a boy and a girl, talking eagerly, the girl's hand
gesticulating at her round, red lips. Ben had no scruples in
overhearing them--theirs appeared to be the universal secret. But here
again he was wrong. She was saying: "Round and round--not up and down.
My dentist says that if you always brush them round and round--"

Then two young men--boys, with cigarettes drooping from their lips;
they were saying, "I haven't pitched a game since before the war, but
he said to go in and get that Tiverton fellow, and so--" Ben saw that
he was in the presence of the hero of the late game. He forgave him,
too.

As a matter of fact, he had never given the fashionable world
enough attention to hate it. He knew that Leo Klein derived a very
revivifying antagonism from reading about it, and often bought himself
an entrance to the opera partly because he loved music, but partly,
Ben always thought, because he liked to look up at the boxes and hate
the occupa