The morning after his dinner party Franklin Mills rose at eight o’clock. He had slept badly, an unusual thing with him, and he found little satisfaction in an attempt to account for his wakefulness on the score of something he had eaten. As he shaved he found that he was not performing the familiar rite automatically as usual. He tried a succession of blades and became impatient when they failed to work with their usual smoothness.... Perhaps he was smoking too much, and he made a computation of the number of cigars and cigarettes he had smoked the day before, and decided that he had exceeded his usual allowance by a couple of cigars. The mental exercise necessary to reach this conclusion steadied him. He had no intention of breaking, as some of his friends and contemporaries had broken, from sheer inattention to the laws of health. He attained a degree of buoyancy as he dressed by thinking of his immunity from the cares that beset most men. No other man in town enjoyed anything like his freedom. He had not dreaded age because he never thought of himself as old. And yet the years were passing. He must study means of deferring old age. Marriage might serve to retard the march of time. The possibility of remarrying had frequently of late teased his imagination. Leila would leave him one of these days; he must have a care that she married well. Mills had plans for Carroll’s future; Carroll would be a most acceptable son-in-law. Leila had so far shown no interest in the secretary, but Leila had the Mills common sense; when it came to marrying, Leila would listen to reason. He called his man to serve breakfast in his room, read the morning paper, inspected his wardrobe and indicated several suits to be pressed. From his south window he viewed the Harden house across the hedge. Millicent was somewhere within.... It might be a mistake to marry a girl as young as Millicent. He knew of men who had made that mistake, but Millicent was not to be measured by ordinary standards. With all the charm of youth, she was amazingly mature; not a feather-brained girl who would marry him for his money. There was the question of her family, her lack of social background; but possibly he magnified the importance of such things. His own standing, he argued, gave him certain rights; he could suffer nothing in loss of dignity by marrying Millicent. It gave a man the appearance of youth to be seen with a young wife. Helen Torrence would not do; she lacked the essential dignity, and her background was far too sketchy--no better than the Hardens’. He had settled that....