"I believe we get the income from the estate until it is settled. But I gave my power of attorney to Morty." "Oh! But if there is money on deposit in the bank you can draw on it." "Could I? Well! I'll just draw a round hundred on Monday at ten A.M." "Why did you give your power of attorney to Morty?" "Oh ... why ... he asked me to ... I know nothing about business, and he naturally would attend to my affairs." "But you are not going away. No one needs your power of attorney. And the executors are Judge Lawton and Mr. Abbott. You are here to sign such papers as they advise.... Don't be angry, please. I am not insinuating anything against Morty. He's never bad a dishonest thought in his life ... has always been, the squarest ... but..." "Well?" Alexina's head was very high. It was quite bad enough for Tom Abbott and Judge Lawton ... but for his sister ... "It's this way, Alexina. People in this world, more particularly men, are just about as honest as circumstances will permit them to be. Some are stronger than Life in one way or another, no doubt of it; but they make up for it by being weaker in others.... I am talking particularly of the money question, the struggle for existence, which the vast majority of men are forced to make.... "Men fight Life from the hour they leave their homes, when they have any, to force success--in one way or another--out of her until the hour they are able to lay down the burden.... Some are too strong and too firm in their ideals ever to do wrong; they would prefer failure, and generally they are strong enough to avoid it, even to succeed in their way against the most overwhelming odds.... Many are too clever not to find some way of compromising and circumventing.... Others just peg along and barely make both ends meet.... Others go under and down and out. "Morty, like millions of other young Americans, had good principles and high ideals inculcated from his earliest boyhood and took to them as a duck takes to water. Nor is he weak. But although he is a hard and steady worker he is also visionary. He speculated on the stock market before he was married. Probably not now as the market is moribund. He is frantic to get rich ... for more reasons than one." "But he never would do anything dishonorable." "No. Nothing he couldn't square with his conscience if it turned out all right. But the most honest man, when in a hole, finds little difficulty in arriving at the conclusion that what is, illogically, the possession of the women of his family, is his if he needs it.