"I looked at Mrs. Evans. It was evident she had already heard something of this magnificent scheme for making us all millionaires, and her verdict was evident enough also. She never raised her eyes from her sewing where she sat in a cane chair, her hair smooth and shining, her dress smooth and shining, too, the embodiment of prim respectability and prudence. She had often inspired me with a crazy ambition to see her being chased by a lunatic with a razor in his hand, or pursued by a hungry Bengal tiger--to see her in some predicament which would crack the shell of middle-class reserve in which she was secreted and show me the live, scampering human being within: but just now I was appalled by the formidable aspect of her disapproval. Even Jack was aware of it, for he watched me to see what I would say. And what could I say? What could any sane human being, with a knowledge of the world, say? I didn't say anything. I scratched my chin and pretended to be thinking deeply.
"For without claiming any especial perspicuity, I must confess that I have never been the raw material out of which 'suckers' are manufactured. It has always seemed to me pertinent to enquire, when Golcondas and Eldorados are offered for a song, why the vendor should be so anxious to hypothecate his priceless privileges. I suppose I am a skeptic. Business, after all, is very much like Religion: it is founded on Faith. And men like my friend Jack, for instance, have great faith in the written word, much more in the beautifully engraved word. For them all the elaborate bunkum by which the financial spell-binder conceals his sinister intentions is of no avail; the jargon of the prospectus, the glittering generalties, the superb optimism, the assumption of austere rectitude, the galaxy of distinguished patrons who for a consideration lend their names to the venture. For it is a venture, and men have always a pathetic hope that it may become an adventure as well, and that their ship will come labouring home, loaded with gold.
"Women, especially married women, are not at all like that, but they are not so much skeptics as infidels. They start up at the first distant approach of the financier, every plume and pin-feather quivering. They don't believe a word of it. They go down on their knees to their husbands and beg and beseech and supplicate them to have nothing to do with it. They shed tears over their children. They write long letters of distracted eloquence to their mothers. The very extremity of their impotence lends a certain tragic dignity to their tantrums. Of course if the cruel domestic tyrant persists in casting his bread upon the waters and speculation turns out to be a huge success, these Cassandras spend the dividends with a sort of stern joy, as though the money were tainted and they must exchange it for something useless and inconvenient as soon as possible. They know, by instinct, I suppose, that a chiffonier or a Chippendale bedroom suite is not legal tender for stock. They feel they've _got_ something. It is a truism, I suppose, to say that women are implacable realists.