The pent-up flood of remorse and resentment
and pride and love--the love that tore itself in pieces because it had
not the pride and self-respect which independence as to money gives--
broke forth in him, fresh as he was from a brutal interview with the
financial clique whom he had given the chance to make much money, and who
were now, for a few thousand dollars, trying to cudgel him out of his one
opportunity to regain his place in his lost world.
"I live--I live like this," he continued, with a gesture that embraced
the room where they were, "and I have one room to myself where I have
lived over four years"--he pointed towards it. "Do you think I would
choose this and all it means--its poverty and its crudeness, its distance
from all I ever had and all my people had, if I could have stood the
other thing--a pauper taking pennies from his own wife? I had had taste
enough of it while I had a little something left; but when I lost
everything on Flamingo, and I was a beggar, I knew I could not stand the
whole thing. I could not, would not, go under the poor-law and accept
you, with the lash of a broken pledge in your hand, as my guardian. So
that's why I left, and that's why I stay here, and that's why I'm going
to stay here, Mona.
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