“I can’t do that,” cried she. “The fall would kill me. You know how proud I am.... Just as I had everything ready for us to get into society! Godfrey, how could you! And I thought you were clever at business.”
I could not see her, nor she me, except in dimmest outline. I said: “But we’d have each other and Margot. And my salary isn’t so small, as salaries go.”
“Isn’t there any way to avoid it?” She was sitting up in bed, her nervous fingers upon my arm. “You must think, Godfrey. You mustn’t play Margot and me this horrible trick. You mustn’t give up so easily. You must think—think—think!”
“I have,” said I. “I’ve not slept for three days and nights. There’s no way—no honest way.”
“Then there is a way!” she cried.
“But not an honest one.”
She laughed scornfully. “And you pretend to love me! When my life and Margot’s happiness are at stake you talk like a Sunday-school boy.”
“Yes,” said I. “And I’ve been thinking more or less that way lately for the first time in years. It wasn’t long after I started when I cut my business eye teeth. I found out that as the game lay I’d not get far if I stuck to the old maxims of the copy book and the Sunday school. Except by accident nobody ever got rich who followed them. To get rich you’ve got to make a lot of people work for you and work cheap, and you’ve got to sell what they make as dear as you can. Success in business means taking advantage of the ignorance or the necessities of your fellow men, or both.”
“Don’t waste time talking that kind of nonsense,” said she impatiently. “It doesn’t mean anything to me—or to anybody, I guess. The thing for you to do is to put your mind on the real thing—how to save your family and yourself.”
“That’s what I’m talking about,” said I. “I’m talking about saving myself and my family. As I told you, my troubles—the first business troubles I’ve ever had—have set me to thinking. I’ve not been doing right all these years. It’s true, everybody does as I’ve been doing. It’s true I’ve been more generous and more considerate than most men with opportunities and the sense to see them. But I’ve been doing wrong.”