There followed several anxious days and nights. On one of those nights I rose from beside my wife—we still slept together—and went into the adjoining room. I turned on an electric light and began for the thousandth time, I dare say, to look at the critical papers and to grope for the desperate “way out.” I was startled by my wife’s voice—sleepy, peevish:
“Do turn out that light and come to bed, Godfrey. You know how it disturbs me for you to get up in the night. And I’ve such a hard day before me to-morrow with the upholsterers and curtain people.”
I obediently turned off the light. As I was about to throw myself into bed and draw the covers over me, a broad beam from the moon flooded the face of a portrait on the opposite wall—the face of my daughter Margot. I sat on the edge of the bed and looked at that face—pure, sweet, with the same elevated expression her mother had in these days of refinement and climbing. Said I to Edna:
“Are you asleep, dear?”
“No,” she answered crossly. “I’m waiting for you to quiet down.”
“Then—let me talk to you a few minutes.”
“Oh, please!” she cried, flinging herself to the far edge of the bed. “You have no consideration for me—none at all.”
“Listen,” I said. “I’m face to face with ruin.”
She did not move or speak, but I could feel her intense attention.
“If I let matters take their course I can save my reputation and my official position. But for many years we’ll have to live quietly—about as we did in Brooklyn.”