e in a lifetime--not all of it
pleasant. We had been brought up in two distinctly different social
environments, but we didn't stop to think of that. We liked the same
sunsets, and the same make of car, and the same kind of ice-cream;
and we looked into each other's eyes and _thought_ we knew the
other--whereas we were really only seeing the mirrored reflection of
ourselves.

And so we were married.

It was everything that was blissful and delightful, of course, at
first. We were still eating the ice-cream and admiring the sunsets. I
had forgotten that there were things other than sunsets and ice-cream,
I suspect. I was not twenty-one, remember, and my feet fairly ached
to dance. The whole world was a show. Music, lights, laughter--how I
loved them all!

_Marie_, of course. Well, yes, I suspect Marie _was_ in the ascendancy
about that time. But I never thought of it that way.

Then came the baby, Eunice, my little girl; and with one touch of her
tiny, clinging fingers, the whole world of sham--the lights and music
and glare and glitter just faded all away into nothingness, where it
belonged. As if anything counted, with _her_ on the other side of the
scales!

I found out then--oh, I found out lots of things. You see, it wasn't
that way at all with Jerry. The lights and music and the glitter and
the sham didn't fade away a mite, to him, when Eunice came. In fact,
sometimes it seemed to me they just grew stronger, if anything.

He didn't like it because I couldn't go with him any more--to dances
and things, I mean. He said the nurse could take care of Eunice. As if
I'd leave my baby with any nurse that ever lived, for any old dance!
The idea! But Jerry went. At first he stayed with me; but the baby
cried, and Jerry didn't like that. It made him irritable and nervous,
until I was _glad_ to have him go. (Who wouldn't be, with his eternal
repetition of "Mollie, _can't_ you stop that baby's crying?" As if
that wasn't exactly what I was trying to do, as hard as ever I could!)
But Jerry didn't see it that way. Jerry never did appreciate what a
wonderful, glorious thing just being a father is.

I think it was at about this time that Jerry took up his painting
again. I guess I have forgotten to mention that all through the first
two years of our marriage, before the baby came, he just tended to me.
He never painted a single picture. But after Eunice came--

But, after all, what is the use of going over these last misera