hands off. You did it so kindly and persuasively. And that chiefly is
why you are a scoundrel. ...

"You educated all these women in a false and abominable doctrine. You
made them believe, and you forced them to act up to the belief, that
money was a magic thing, and that they had a magic power over it. All
they had to do was to press a certain button, or to employ a certain
pretty tone, and money would flow forth like water from the rock of
Moses. And so far as they were concerned money actually did behave in
this convenient fashion.

"But all the time you were deceiving them by a conjuring-trick, just
as priests of strange cults deceive their votaries.... And further,
you taught them that money had but one use--to be spent. You
may--though by a fluke--have left a quantity of money to your widow,
but her sole skill is to spend it. She has heard that there is such a
thing as investing money. She tries to invest it. But, bless you, you
never said a word to her about that, and the money vanishes now as
magically as it once magically appeared in her lap.

"Yes, you compelled all these four women to live so that money and
luxury and servants and idleness were absolutely essential to them if
their existence was to be tolerable. And what is worse, you compelled
them to live so that, deprived of magic money, they were incapable of
existing at all, tolerably or intolerably. Either they must expire in
misery--after their splendid career with you!--or they must earn
existence by smiles and acquiescences and caresses. (For you cut their
hands off.) They must beg for their food and raiment. There are
different ways of begging.