“You were not a nagging woman, Constance,” he went on in a somewhat softened tone.  “In fact you have been a good wife; you have never thrown it up to me that I was unable to make good to the degree of many of our friends in purely commercial lines.  All you have ever said is the truth.  A banking house pays low for its brains.  My God!” he cried stiffening out in the chair and clenching his fists, “it pays low for its temptations, too.”

There had been nothing in the world Carlton would not have given to make happy the woman who stood now, leaning on the table in cold silence, with averted head, regarding neither him nor the pile of greenbacks.

“Hundreds of thousands of dollars passed through my hands every week,” he resumed.  “That business owed me for my care of it.  It was taking the best in me and in return was not paying what other businesses paid for the best in other men.  When a man gets thinking that way, with a woman whom he loves as I love you—­something happens.”

He paused in the bitterness of his thoughts.  She moved as if to speak.  “No, no,” he interrupted.  “Hear me out first.  All I asked was a chance to employ a little of the money that I saw about me—­not to take it, but to employ it for a little while, a few days, perhaps only a few hours.  Money breeds money.  Why should I not use some of this idle money to pay me what I ought to have?

“When Mr. Green was away last summer I heard some inside news about a certain stock, go it happened that I began to juggle the accounts.  It is too long a story to tell how I did it.  Anybody in my position could have done it—­for a time.  It would not interest you anyhow.  But I did it.  The first venture was successful.  Also the spending of the money was very successful, in its way.  That was the money that took us to the fashionable hotel in Atlantic City where we met so many people.  Instead of helping me, it got me in deeper.

“When the profit from this first deal was spent there was nothing to do but to repeat what I had done successfully before.  I could not quit now.  I tried again, a little hypothecation of some bonds.  Stocks went down.  I had made a bad bet and five thousand dollars was wiped out, a whole year’s salary.  I tried again, and wiped out five thousand more.  I was at my wits’ end.  I have borrowed under fictitious names, used names of obscure persons as borrowers, have put up dummy security.  It was possible because I controlled the audits.  But it has done no good.  The losses have far outbalanced the winnings and to-day I am in for twenty-five thousand dollars.”

She was watching him now with dilating eyes as the horror of the situation was burned into her soul.  He raced on, afraid to pause lest she should interrupt him.

“Mr. Green has been talked into introducing scientific management and a new system into the business by a certified public accountant, an expert in installing systems and discovering irregularities.  Here I am, faced by certain exposure,” he went on, pacing the floor and looking everywhere but at her face.  “What should I do?  Borrow?  It is useless.  I have no security that anyone would accept.