THE CLIMBERS



year you were satisfied with the twenty-eighth of

April only, and last year you forgot the day alto-

gether. And yet what a happy first year it was!

  STERLING. Ah, you see I did make you happy

once !

  BLANCHE. Blessedly happy! Our long silences

in those days were not broken by an oath and a

fling out of the room. Oh, the happiness it means

to a wife to see it is hard for her husband to leave

her in the morning, and to be taken so quickly -

even roughly -into his arms at night that she

knows he has been longing to come back to her.

Nothing grew tame that first year. And at its end I

climbed to the highest step I had reached yet, when

you leaned over my bed and cried big man's tears,

the first I'd ever seen you cry, and kissed me first,

and then little Richard lying on my warm arm, and

said, "God bless you, little mother." [There is a

pause. BLANCHE cries softly a moment. STERLING



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