than I could have forced myself to steal another's money by
raising a check.

My New England ancestors had distilled into my blood certain
prejudices; only, where my great-grandfather, or even my grandfather,
would have said that he refrained from evil because he feared God, I was
content merely to feel that there are some things a gentleman doesn't
stoop to. With them it was the stern daughter of the voice of God who
ruled thoughts and acts; with me it was, if anything, the class
obligations of culture, breeding, good form. Just as I wore correct
wedding garments at a wedding, and would far rather have cut my throat
with a knife than carry food on it from plate to mouth, so, in the face
of any of life's moral or emotional crises, I clung to what instinct and
cultivation told me were the correct sentiments.

Gertrude, it is true, was not precisely fulfilling her part in our
contract, but then--Gertrude was a woman; and the excusable frailties of
women should always be regarded as trumpet calls to the chivalry of man.
Absurdly primitive, such ideas as these! Seated with Maltby Phar in my
study, I had laughed them out of court many a time; for I could talk
pure Bernard Shaw--our prophet of those days--with anybody, and even go
him one better. But when it came to the pinch of decisive action I had
always thrown back to my sources and left the responsibility on them. I
did so now.

Yet it was hard to speak of anything but enchantment, witchery,
fascination, when, from her desk, Susan looked round to me, faintly
puzzled, faintly smiling. She was not a pretty girl, as young
America--its taste superbly catered to by popular magazines--understands
that phrase; nor was she beautiful by any severe classic
standard--unless you are willing to accept certain early Italians as
having established classic standards; not such faultless painters as
Raphael or Andrea del Sarto, but three or four of the wayward lesser men
whose strangely personal vision created new and unexpected types of
loveliness. Not that I recall a single head by any one of them that
prefigured Susan; not that I am helping you, baffled reader, to see her.
Words are a dull medium for portraiture, or I am too dull a dog to catch
with them even a phantasmal likeness. It is the mixture of dark and
bright in Susan that eludes me; she is all soft shadow and sharpest
gleams. But that is nonsense. I give it up.

It was really, then, a triumph for my ancestors that I did