If there
had been any necessity for giving a power of attorney when she went
to Europe she would have drawn it in his favor without hesitation, so
completely had she forgotten her earlier incitements to precaution....If
she had, no doubt she would have returned to find herself penniless.
Whether he had stolen the money to speculate with or to extricate himself
from some business muddle she did not pause to wonder. He had lost it; that
was sufficiently evident from his depression. When his powers of bluff
failed him matters were serious indeed.
He had stolen and lost. The first would have been unforgivable, but the
last was unpardonable.
And he had taken her money as he would have taken Gora's, or his parents'
had they been alive, because however they might lash him with their
contempt, his body was safe from prison, his precious position in society
unshaken. She knew him well enough to be sure that if he had had forty
thousand dollars of some outsider's money under his hand it would have been
safe no matter what his predicament. He would have accepted the alternative
of bankruptcy without hesitation.
But with the women of his family a man was always safe. She remembered
something that Gora had once said to the same effect....Yes, she could have
forgiven the theft of an outsider, for at least she would be spared this
sickening suffocating sensation of contempt.
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