The defining moment was the look on Jonathan’s face when he learned what I owned — because it revealed that I had designed my test wrong from the start.

The question was never whether a man could love a poor woman.

The question was whether he could respect a human being he believed had nothing to offer him.

The answer had already been delivered, on my wedding night, inside a bucket of dirty laundry water.

I have given a version of that lesson to a great many women since, younger ones mostly, who come to me for advice about work or money and end up, somehow, telling me about a man.

And I always tell them the same thing, which cost me two years and a split lip to learn.