Nevertheless, all his commercial instincts revolted. They would not support this arbitrary dispensing of justice. The Gerault Bonley Marble Company’s right was definite and indefeasible, and unlawfully he had divested them of it. The idea was abhorrent to his commercial conscience. All the depth of character which he possessed lay in this endowment. He had no religious convictions, no spiritual estimate of the abstractions of right and wrong. To him the thought of religion was like a capitulation. It had never occurred to him as a thing to live by. It seemed of the nature of mortuaries, akin to last wills and testaments, of the very essence of finality. His moral structure was the creation of correct commercial principles,--sound enough, but limited. It was an impenetrable external shell, at once an asset, a protection, and a virtue, but it had no intimate inner tissues. His soul languished inert within it. As far as his financial integrity was concerned, there had been no leanings to the wrong, no struggles against temptation, not even temptation; he was proof against it. His integrity diminished even his capacity for repentance. He had never felt himself a sinner. On the contrary, he thought he had done mighty well. He had been for years in touch with the markets at home and abroad, but he could quote no spiritual values. For the first time in his life, he groped for a knowledge of the right, he strove with the definite sense of wrong-doing. His supposed death had all the taint of dishonor; it affected him as a false entry might have done. The indirect good that it wrought, the natural justice that it meted out, appealed to him no more than the success of speculating with the funds of the firm that employed him might serve to commend this peculation to his incorruptible commercial honor. He fared better when he sought to protest an irresponsibility. It was the Marble Company’s affair to disprove his death if they could, to maintain themselves in continual assurance of his life. “I’ve seen old Bonley perform so long like a hen with one chicken that I imitate him instinctively. I assume a sort of guardianship of the Gerault Bonley Marble Company as they assumed it of me, and one is as absurd as the other. The company’s counsel ought to be equal to the situation. I have nothing to do with them. Their property is held for a term of years, which happens to be the duration of my life. I take on as if a _cestui que vie_ was a salaried officer of the Bonley Company,--as if I were paid for drawing the breath of life. It is no part of my duty to report continually for observation. I forfeit no pledge. I violate no trust. And self-preservation is the first law of nature.”