There was nothing we could do without.  At the end of the year on a $1200 salary we were $700 behind; eight months later, after our first baby came, we were over a thousand—­and by that time, it seemed, permanently estranged.  I actually was carrying out a threat of separation and stripping the apartment, one morning, when Max came back from town and sat down to discuss matters with me.

A curious labyrinthine discussion it was, winding from recriminations and flat admissions that our marriage was a failure and our love was dead, to the most poignant memories of our engagement days.  But its central point was Max’s detached insistence that we make marriage over into a purely utilitarian affair.

“Man needs the decencies of a home,” he said over and over.  “It doesn’t do a fellow any good with a firm like mine to have them know he can’t manage his affairs.  And my firm is the kind of firm I want to work for.  This next year is important; and if I spend it dragging through a nasty divorce business, knowing that everybody knows, I’ll be about thirty per cent efficient.  I’m willing to admit that marriage—­even a frost like ours—­is useful.  Will you?”

    I had to.  My choice rested between going home, where there were two
    younger sisters, or leaving the baby somewhere and striking out for
    myself.

“It seems to me,” said Max, taking out his pencil, “that if two reasonably clever people can put their best brain power and eight hours a day into a home, it might amount to something sometime.  The thing resolves itself into a choice between the things we can do without and the things we can’t.  We’ll list them.  We can’t do without three meals and a roof; but there must be something.”

    “You can certainly give up silk socks and cigarettes,” I said; and,
    surprisingly, on this old sore point between us Max agreed.

    “You can give up silk stockings, then,” he said, and put them down. 
    Silk socks and silk stockings!  Out of all possible economies, they
    were the only things that we could think of.  Finally—­

“We could make baby an excuse,” I said, “and never get out to the club till very late—­after dinner—­and stay just for the dancing.  And we could get out of the dinner club and the theater bunch.  Only, we ought to have some fun.”

    “You can go to matinees, and tell me about them, so we can talk
    intelligently.  We’ll say we can’t leave the kid nights—­”

    “We can buy magazines and read up on plays.  We’ll talk well enough
    if we do that, and people won’t know we haven’t been.  Put down: 
    ‘Magazines for plays.’”