If Jim hadn't loved me, it would be
less shameful to trade on the trust of these kind people. I see that
clearly! And I see how hateful it is to make Brian an innocent partner
in the fraud.
I'm taking advantage of one man who is dead, and another who is blind.
And it is as though I were "betting on a certainty," because there's
nobody alive who can come forward to tell the Becketts or Brian what I
am. I'm safe, _brutally_ safe!
You'll see from what I have written how Brian turned the scales. The
plan he proposed developed in the Becketts' minds with a quickness that
could happen only with Americans--and millionaires. Father Beckett sees
and does things on the grand scale. Perhaps that's the secret of his
success. He was a miner once, he has told Brian and me. Mrs. Beckett was
a district school teacher in the Far West, where his fortune began. They
married while he was still a poor man. But that's by the way! I want to
tell you now of his present, not of his past: and the working out of our
future from Brian's suggestion. Ten minutes after the planting of the
seed a tree had grown up, and was putting forth leaves and blossoms.
Soon there will be fruit. And it will come into existence _ripe_! I
suppose Americans are like that. They manage their affairs with mental
intensive culture.
The Becketts are prepared to love me for Jim's sake; but Brian they
worship as a supernatural being. Mr. Beckett says he's saved them from
themselves, and given them an incentive to live.
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