that was stupendous, but how they ever managed it. It seems to me they
must have taken _all_ the risks, always.

I suppose if you asked him he'd say, "That's how." It was certainly the
way they managed the business of living. Perhaps it's why they managed it
on the whole so well. I remember how when I was shilly-shallying about
that last job of mine he said, "Take it. Take it. If you can risk living
at all, my dear fellow, you can risk that."

And he added, "If I'd only _your_ luck!"

Well, that's exactly what he did have. He had my luck, I mean the luck I
ought to have had, all the time, from the beginning to the very end. But
there is one thing he can't take from me, and that is the telling of this
story. He can hold it up as long as he lives--as long as _she_ lives--as
he has held up pretty nearly everything where I was concerned. But he
can't take it from me. He doesn't "want" it. Even he with his infernal
talent couldn't do anything with it. Unscrupulous as he was, and I assure
you he'd stick at nothing (he'd "take" his mother's last agony if he
"wanted" it badly enough), indecent as he was, he'd stick at that.

I don't mean he couldn't take his wife, part of her, anyhow, at a pinch.
And I don't mean he couldn't take himself, his own emotions, his own
eccentricities, if he happened to want them, and his own meannesses, if
nobody else's, so to speak, would do. But he couldn't and wouldn't take
his own big things, particularly not that last thing.

When I say that I can't publish this story yet as it stands, I'm not
forgetting that I _have_ published the end of it already. But only in the
way of business; to publish that sort of thing was what I went out for;