Blanche monologue (Act 4) — The climbers : $b A play in four acts

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 _is silent, ashamed. Again she turns upon him, rousing herself, but with a voice broken with emotion._] And what a _bad_ father you've been to that boy!