“I’ve got to love something,” I found myself protesting. “And the children seem all that is left.”
“How about me?” asked my husband, with his acidulated and slightly one-sided smile.
“You’ve changed, Dinky-Dunk,” was all I could say.
“But some day,” he contended, “you may wake up to the fact that I’m still a human being.”
“I’ve wakened up to the fact that you’re a different sort of human being than I had thought.”
“Oh, we’re all very much alike, once you get our number,” asserted my husband.
“You mean men are,” I amended.
“I mean that if men can’t get a little warmth and color and sympathy in the home-circle they’re going to edge about until they find a substitute for it, no matter how shoddy it may be,” contended Dinky-Dunk.
“But isn’t that a hard and bitter way of writing life down to one’s own level?” I asked, trying to swallow the choke that wouldn’t stay down in my throat.
“Well, I can’t see that we get much ahead by trying to sentimentalize the situation,” he said, with a gesture that seemed one of frustration. 31