And as a rule
her husband isn't technically good and so she has power over him. She
says nothing, but he knows that she knows, and so when she does
something peculiarly extravagant and outrageous, he reaches meekly for
his checkbook. For one man who is ruined by drink there are ten ruined
by women; and not by the kind of women who are supposed to ruin men
either; not by the street-walker, the chorus girl or the demi-mondaine.
American men are ruined by their wives and daughters who are
technically good. Don't we know dozens of cases? When there is a
crash in Wall Street how many well-to-do married men go to smash to one
well-to-do bachelor? A marriage isn't a partnership. It's the
opposite except in name. It's a partnership in which the junior
partner gives her whole mind to extracting from the business sums of
money which ought to go back into it. And she spends those sums almost
invariably on things which diminish in value the moment they are
bought. It isn't the serpent that is the arch enemy of mankind. It's
the pool in which Eve first saw that she was beautiful, or would be if
she could only get her fig-leaf skirt to hang right."

"But I think," said Fulton gently, "that women ought to have pretty
clothes, and bright jewels and luxuries. If a girl loves a man, and
proves it and keeps on loving him, how is it possible for him to pay
her back short of ruining himself? Haven't you ever felt that if the
whole world was yours to give you'd give it gladly? Why complain then
when afterwards you are only asked to give that infinitesimal portion
of the world that happens at the moment to be yours? If a man is
ruined for his wife, if cares shorten his life, even then he has done
far, far less than he once said he was willing and eager to do."

He looked at the big clock over the mantelpiece, sat silent for a
moment, then rose, wished us good-night and went out.

"You wouldn't think," said Harry, "to hear him talk that a woman was
playing chuck-cherry with that infinitesimal portion of the world that
happens to be his. I was in the bank this morning and I saw him come
out of the President's room. He looked a little as if he'd just
identified the body of a missing dear one in the morgue."

"I'm afraid he is frightfully hard up," I said, "but he hasn't said
anything to me about it, and I don't like to volunteer."

"He's a good man," said Harry, "one of the few really good men I know,
and it's a blamed sham