“Marry again,” explained he. “Another sort of woman, and keep her
and her children away from this world of ours. I’d like to try the
experiment. But--” He laughed apologetically. “I’m afraid I love
the city and its amusements too well. I’m not as determined nor as
ardent as I once was. What does it matter, anyway? So long as we are
comfortable and well amused, why should we bother?” After a silence,
“Another mistake I made--the initial mistake--was in giving her a
fortune. She is almost as well fixed as I am. Don’t make that mistake,
Godfrey.”
“I’ve already done it,” said I. “And I shall never be sorry that I
did. I gave my wife the first large sum I made, and I’ve added to it
from time to time. I wanted her and Margot to be safe, no matter what
happened to me.”
“A mistake,” he said. “A sad mistake. I know how you felt. I felt the
same way. But there’s something worse than the more or less sentimental
aversion to being loved and considered merely for the money they can
get out of you and can’t get without you.”
“Nothing worse,” I declared.
“Yes,” he replied. “It’s worse to give a foolish woman the power to
make a fool of herself, of her children, and of you.”
“That is bad, I’ll admit,” said I. “But the other is worse--at least to
me.”
“You’d refuse to make a child behave itself, through the selfish fear
that it would hate you for doing so.”