Half Loaves by Margaret Culkin Banning

Even the unhappy, disillusioned man or woman who looks back at a wrecked marriage with cynicism or disgust or who does not look back at all because it is too painful, will, none the less, carry about with him until the end of his life a few poignant memories which never lose their power to thrill him anew, though desire to relieve them may be gone or the companion of his memories have become ludicrous. It is the fat dowager still able to blush at her daughter's teasing inquiry about the time father asked her to marry him, it is the faded, washed-out woman who sobs in the movies as the heroine tells the hero that she is going to have a child and they fade out in an embrace, it is the old gentleman who grows sentimental over a popular song, who bear this out. Troubles, bitternesses, grief -- temporary drama, mock drama they may be -- but the drama of undying poetry is in love and not in disillusion or hate.

The hesitation of the first steps of marriage, the explanation of love, the abandonment, the amazing tendernesses, the secret rivalry in affection for each other -- those are the moments of greatest dramatic intensity. Stories give us, as is natural for them, perhaps, the odd cases -- the ill-matched couples -- but for the great number of people who follow nature and are led by her there never comes again greater poignancy in life than steeps the wedding night and the hour of the birth of their children. More excitement, more pleasure, more joy at other times perhaps -- but it is then that human life sounds its depths. It is the memory of such times which may account, more than the pressure of society or the weight of habit, for the strange fidelities of men to unworthy women and of women to unworthy men.