No reply. She was asleep--or, rather, was pretending to be asleep. The matter had been settled, why discuss it further? Why expose herself longer than unavoidable to the danger of being unable to be, or to pretend to be, ignorant of business, of the foundation upon which her splendid, cultured structure of ambition proudly reared? Often in her sleep her hand would seek mine, and when it was comfortably nestled she would give a little sigh of content that thrilled me through and through. Her hand now stole into mine and the sigh of content came softly from her lips. “My love,” I murmured, kissing her cheek before I lay down. How could I for a minute have considered any course that would have made her unhappy, that might have lessened, perhaps destroyed, her love for me? IV It is hardly necessary to say that I threw overboard my partners and saved myself. Indeed, I emerged from the crisis--liberally bespattered with mud, it is true--but richer than when I entered it. Since I was doing the act that was the supreme proof of my possessing the courage and the skill for leadership in business--since I was definitely breaking with the old-fashioned morality--I felt it was the part of wisdom to do the thing so thoroughly, so profitably, that instead of being execrated I should be admired. There were attacks on me in the newspapers; there were painful interviews with my partners--not so painful to me as they would have been had I not been able to remind them of their own unsuccessful treacheries and to enforce the spoken reminder with the documentary proof. But on the whole I came off excellently well--as who does not that “gets away with the goods?” In these days of increased intelligence and consequent lessened hypocrisy, the big business man is the object of only perfunctory hypocrisies from outraged morality. It has been discovered that the farmer watering his milk or the grocer using solder-“mended” scales is as bad as the man who “reorganizes” a railway or manipulates a stock--is worse actually because the massed mischief of the million little business rascals is greater than the sensational misdeeds of the few great rascals. It has been discovered that human nature is good or bad only according to the opportunities and necessities, not according to abstract moral standards. And the cry is no longer, “Kill the scoundrel,” but, “That fellow had the sense to outwit us. We must learn from him how to sharpen our wits so that we won’t let ourselves be robbed.” A healthful sign this, that masses of men are ceasing from twaddle about vague ideals and are educating themselves in practical horse sense. It may be that some day the honest husbandman will learn to guard his granary not only against the robber with the sack in the dark of the morn, but also against the rats and mice who pilfer ten bushels to every one that is stolen. Of one thing I am certain--until men learn to take heed in the small, they will remain easy prey in the large.