In refusing Edna her heart’s desire thus promptly and tersely I had an object. I assumed she would protest and argue; in the discussion that would follow some light might come to me, utterly befogged as to what course to take about my family affairs. I knew something should be done--something quick and drastic. But what? It was no new experience to me to be faced with complex and well-nigh impossible situations. My business life had been a succession of such experiences. And while I had learned much as to handling them, I had also learned how dangerous it is to rush in recklessly and to begin action before one has discovered what to do--and what _not_ to do. The world is full of Hasty Hals and Hatties who pride themselves on their emergency minds, on knowing just what to do in any situation the instant it arises; and fine spectacles they are, lying buried and broken amid the ruins they have aggravated if not created. How recover my wife? How rescue my daughter? I could think of no plan--of no beginning toward a plan. And when Edna, by receiving my refusal in cold silence, defeated my hope of a possibly illuminating discussion, I did not know which way to turn. Why had I refused to help her in the way she suggested? Not on moral grounds, gentle reader. There I should have been as free from scruple as you yourself would have been, as you perhaps have been in your social climbing or maneuvering in your native town, wherever it is. Nor yet through fear of failure. I did not know the social game, but I did know something of human nature. And I had found out that the triumphant class, far from being the gentlest and most civilized, as its dominant position in civilization would indicate, was in fact the most barbarous, was saturated with the raw savage spirit of the right of might. I am speaking of actualities, not of pretenses--of deeds, not of words. To find a class approaching it in frank savagery of will and action you would have to descend through the social strata until you came to the class that wields the blackjack and picks pockets and dynamites safes. The triumphant class became triumphant not by refinement and courtesy and consideration, but by defiance of those fundamentals of civilization--by successful defiance of them. It remained the triumphant class by keeping that primal savagery of nature. As soon as any member of it began to grow tame--gentle, considerate, except where consideration for others would increase his own wealth and power, became really a disciple of the sweet gospel he professed and urged upon others--just so soon did he begin to lose his wealth into the strong unscrupulous hands ever reaching for it--and with waning wealth naturally power and prestige waned.