- When Benjamin gets home, Hildegarde is forty. He is less attracted to her than ever.
- In the mirror, he sees that he now looks about thirty. This depresses him; he had hoped that, once his physical age met his actual age, this bizarre process might stop. It seems that is not the case.
- Hildegarde is angry with her husband for allowing this to continue. She thinks he ought to just stop this anti-aging right now. The rift between the couple widens, and Benjamin wonders what he ever saw in her in the first place.
- Benjamin is more energetic than ever. He goes out to lots of parties and dances with all the young single girls, to his wife’s anger. People remark at what an ill-matched couple he and his much older wife are, forgetting that their parents had remarked on the same ill-matched couple back in 1880.
- As Benjamin is increasingly consumed with his social life, he passes off his family hardware company to his son Roscoe, who by this time has graduated from Harvard.