“The remainder of the night is a dream to me. There was but one source from which I could hope in the present condition of my affairs, to procure a hundred thousand dollars; and that was from the box where I had stowed away the bonds destined for the use of the Japha heirs. To borrow was impossible, even if I had been in possession of proper securities to give. I was considered as having relinquished speculation and dared not risk the friendship of Mr. Stuyvesant by a public betrayal of my necessity. The Japha bonds or my own fortune must go, and it only remained with me to determine which.
“Paula, nothing but the ingrained principle of a lifetime, the habit of doing the honest thing without thought or hesitation, saves a man at an hour like that. Strong as I believed myself to be in the determination never again to flaw my manhood by the least action unworthy of my position as the guardian of trusts, earnest as I was in my recoil from evil, and sincere as I may have been in my admiration of and desire for the good, I no sooner saw myself tottering between ruin and a compromise with conscience, than I hesitated—hesitated with you under my roof, and with the words we had been speaking still ringing in my ears. Ona’s influence, for all the trials of our married life, was still too strong upon me. To think of her as deprived of the splendor which was her life, daunted my very soul. I dared not contemplate a future in which she must stand denuded of everything which made existence dear to her; yet how could I do the evil thing I contemplated, even to save her and preserve my own position! For—and you must understand this—I regarded any appropriation of these funds I had delegated to the use of the Japhas, as a fresh and veritable abuse of trust. They were not mine. I had given them away. Unknown to any one but my own soul and God, I had deeded them to a special purpose, and to risk them as I now proposed doing, was an act that carried me back to the days of my former delinquency, and made the repentance of the last few years the merest mockery. What if I might recover them hereafter and restore them to their place; the chances in favor of their utter loss were also possible, and honesty deals not with chances. I suffered so, I had a momentary temptation towards suicide; but suddenly, in the midst of the struggle, came the thought that perhaps in my estimate of Ona I had committed a gross injustice, that while she loved splendor seemingly more than any woman I had ever known, she might be as far from wishing me to retain her in it at the price of my own self-respect, as the most honest-hearted wife in the world; and struck by the hope, I left my agent at a hotel and hurried home through the early morning to her side. She Was asleep, of course, but I wakened her. It was dark and she had a right to be fretful, but when I whispered in her ear, ‘Get up and listen to me, for our fortune is at stake,’ she at once rose and having risen, was her clearest, coldest, most implacable self. Paula, I told her my story, my whole story as I have told it to you here. I dropped no thread, I smoothed over no offence. Torturing as it was to my pride, I laid bare my soul before her, and then in a burst of appeal such as I hope never to be obliged to make use of again, asked her as she was a woman and a wife, to save me in this hour of my temptation.
“Paula, she refused. More than that, she expressed the bitterest scorn of my mawkish conscientiousness, as she called it. That I should consider myself as owing anything to the detestable wretch who was the only representative of the Japhas, was bad enough, but that I should go on treasuring the money that would save us, was disgraceful if not worse, and betrayed a weakness of mind for which she had never given me credit.
“‘But Ona,’ I cried, ‘if it is a weakness of mind, it is also an equivalent to my consciousness of right living. Would you have me sacrifice that?’
“‘I would have you sacrifice anything necessary to preserve us in our position,’ said she; and I stood aghast before an unscrupulousness greater than any I had hitherto been called upon to face.
“‘Ona,’ repeated I, for her look was cold, ‘do you realize what I have been telling you? Most wives would shudder when informed that their husbands had perpetrated a dishonest act in order to win them.’
“A thin strange smile heralded her reply. ‘Most wives would,’ returned she, ‘but most wives are ignorant. Did you suppose I did not know what it cost you to marry me? Papa took care I should miss no knowledge that might be useful to me.’
“‘And you married me knowing what I had done!’ exclaimed I, with incredulous dismay.
“‘I married you, knowing you were too clever, or believing you to be too clever, to run such a risk again.’
“I can say no more concerning that hour. With a horror for this woman such as I had never before experienced for living creature, I rushed out of her presence, loathing the air she breathed, yet resolved to do her bidding. Can you understand a man hating a woman, yet obeying her; despising her, yet yielding? I cannot, now, but that day there seemed no alternative. Either I must kill myself or follow her wishes. I chose to do the latter, forgetting that God can kill, and that, too, whom and when He pleases.