Young People's Pride by Stephen Vincent Benet

Mr. Severance -- the courtesy title at least is due him -- seems to be a man with quite a number of costly possessions. At least here he is with another house, a dinner-table, servants, guests, another Mrs. Severance or somebody who seems to fill her place very adequately at the opposite end of the table, all as if Rose and the Riverside Drive apartment and reading Dickens aloud were only parts of a doll-house kept in one locked drawer of his desk.

The dinner is flawless, the guests importantly jeweled or stomached, depending on their sex, the other Mrs. Severance an admirable hostess -- and yet in spite of it all, Mr. Severance does not seem to be enjoying himself as he should. But this may be due to a sort of minstrel give-and-take of dialogue that keeps going on between what he says for publication and what he thinks.