I paused, hoping for some sign of sympathy. None came. I went on:
“And I’ve been wondering these last few days if by doing it I haven’t been ruining myself and my family—not financially, but in more important ways. Edna, what’s the sense in this life we’re leading? What will be the end of it all? Is there any decency or happiness in it? Haven’t we been going backward instead of forward?”
All the time I was talking I could feel she was not listening. When I finished she said: “Godfrey, what is this way you can escape by?”
“I can sell out my partners in the deals that have gone bad.”
“Perhaps they’re selling you out,” she instantly suggested. “Why, of course they are doing that very thing!—while you are driveling about honesty like a backwoods hypocrite of a church deacon.”
“No, they’re not selling me out,” said I.
“How do you know?” cried she.
“I caught them at that trick in a former deal and in the early stages of this one. And I fixed things so that, while they have to trust me, I don’t trust them.”
She laughed mockingly. “Godfrey, I think your mind must be going. You talking about sacrificing your fortune and your wife and your child for men who’ve tried to ruin you—men who are even now thinking out some scheme for doing it.... Suppose you saved yourself and let them go—what then? Wouldn’t you be rich? And when you were secure again couldn’t you pay them back what they lost if you were still foolish enough to think it necessary?”
It was not the first time she had astonished me with the depth of her practical insight—and her skill at logic—when she cared to use her mind. “I had thought of saving myself and paying back afterwards,” said I. “But I’m not sure I’d save myself. It’s simply my one chance.”