"Yes, you compelled all these four women to live so that money and luxury and servants and idleness were absolutely essential to them if their existence was to be tolerable. And what is worse, you compelled them to live so that, deprived of magic money, they were incapable of existing at all, tolerably or intolerably. Either they must expire in misery--after their splendid career with you!--or they must earn existence by smiles and acquiescences and caresses. (For you cut their hands off.) They must beg for their food and raiment. There are different ways of begging. "But you protest that you did it out of kindness, and because you wanted them to have a real good time. My good Alpha, it is absurd for a man to argue that he cut off a woman's hands out of kindness. Human beings are so incredulous, so apt to think evil, that such arguments somehow fail to carry conviction. I am fairly credulous myself, but even I decline to accept the plea. And I say that if your conduct was meant kindly, it is a pity that you weren't born cruel. Cruelty would have been better. Was it out of kindness that you refused to allow your youngest to acquire the skill to earn her own living? Was it out of kindness that you thwarted her instinct and filled her soul with regret that may be eternal? It was not. I have already indicated, in speaking of your son, one of the real reasons. Another was that you took pride in having these purely ornamental and loving creatures about you, and you would not suffer them to have an interest stronger than their interest in you, or a function other than the function of completing your career and illustrating your success in the world. If the girl was to play the piano, she was to play it in order to perfect your home and minister to your pleasure and your vanity, and for naught else. You got what you wanted, and you infamously shut your eyes to the risks. "I hear you expostulate that you didn't shut your eyes to the risks, and that there will always be risks, and that it is impossible to provide fully against all of them.