260
PARTISAN REVIEW
trary everything became worse, as Michael became more successful.
Michael allowed only one thing to interfere with his infidelities. He
would come home in the evening to watch his infant son be fed and
then departed again on some transparent pretext. Sarah's feeling of
humiliation reached a new intensity when the husband of a girlhood
friend saw Michael going into a downtown hotel when he was sup–
posed to be in Pittsburgh on business. Hearing of this, Sarah went
to her mother and said that she wanted to leave her husband and
return to the household. Ruth Hart insisted that she stay with her
husband. Rebecca entered the argument on her mother's side.
"Lots of women get used to that kind of behavior," said Rebecca.
"No one thinks any less of you because Michael behaves like that."
It was more difficult for Sarah to take criticism from Rebec_ca
than from anyone else. She turned to Rebecca and said:
"You'll see how you feel when your husband goes off for a
week end with some cheap woman."
Samuel also admired Michael because he was a successful busi–
nessman.
Until he was twenty, Samuel showed no real interest in girls,
and he did not seek them out, although when he was with the other
boys he enjoyed the discussion of making love and made believe that
he too had women on the string. When he was twenty, he was
seduced by the stenographer in the office in which he worked. She
was a girl of thirty who had been beguiled by her perception that
Samuel was indeed innocent. Samuel had found the experience a
strange one. It was not the exciting or overwhelming experienr.e it
was supposed to be, and he wondered that the boys made such a
fuss about it. However, he took pride in the fact that the girl had
gone after him, and he bragged to the boys of the gang about the
occasion.
"I did not have to do a thing," he said, "it was handed to me
on a silver platter."
"That's the way some girls are," said one of Samuel's friends,
"they want to be like men, they want to start everything."
"Don't forget," said another interested young man, "some of
them like them young. Samuel looks just like a big baby."
In his own mind Samuel compared the excitement of gambling,
of playing poke• or betting on a ball game, with the' mild experience
of love he had just known. When he bet on the outcome of a contest,
he became very nervous, he waited impatiently for the results, he
smoked cigars and was unable to sit down, and when he won he was
