motto was "Beat the other guy to it." A successful man, troubled with
few subtleties either of approach or conscience, he viewed the marriage
relationship in the old-fashioned way and the new American indulgence. A
man's wife was to be given all the clothes she wanted, servants to help
run the home, ought to bear two or three children, and love her
indulgent husband. As for any real intimacy, he knew nothing of it.
Kindly, self-indulgent, wife-indulgent, child-indulgent, ruthless in
business, he may stand as something America has produced without any
effort.

From the very first night J.'s world was shattered. We need not enter
into details in this matter, but a woman of this type needs finesse in
the initiation into marriage more than at any other time. Cave-man style
outraged her every fiber, and the man was dumbfounded at her reaction.
Though he tried to make amends his very effort and lack of understanding
complicated matters.

Aside from this matter, which in the course of time became adjusted, so
that though she rebelled desire arose in her, she found herself at odds
with her husband's tastes and conduct in little things. Though his table
manners were good enough, the gusto of his eating annoyed her and took
away her own appetite. When they went to a play together the coarse
jokes and the plainly sensuous aroused his enthusiasm. He lacked
subtlety and could not understand the "finer" things of life. As he grew
settled in matrimony, which he enjoyed in spite of her nerves (which he
took for granted as like a woman), he grew stouter and this irritated
and jarred her.

She finally realized she no longer loved him. It is doubtful if she
realized this before the birth of her first and only child. She lacked
maternal feeling and rebelled with a bitter rebellion against the
distortion of her figure that came with the pregnancy. The nursing
ordered by the doctor and expected by all around her nearly drove her
"wild", she said, for she felt like a "cow", a "female." Indeed she
reacted bitterly against the femaleness that marriage forced on her and
hated the essential maleness of her husband. Her emotional reaction
against nursing took away her milk, and finally the disgusted family
doctor ordered the baby weaned and he was turned over to a servant.

She went back to her own life, determined to become a housewife, to see
if she could not love her husband and her home. But everything he did
irritated her, and everythin