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 sh