The Game and the Candle

It will last about six months, stated John Allard. Afterward—
His brother looked up at him helplessly.
Afterward? he echoed drearily.
Afterward there must be more. It is not possible, simply is not , for poverty to approach Theodora and Aunt Rose. Look around you, Robert.
Under the clear California moonlight the jade-green lawns and terraces dropped one below the other to the distant road. Through them writhed the long serpentine drive and paths; dotted over them stood dark masses of flowering bushes or trees, with here and there the snowy gleam of a statue; over all floated the rhythmic tinkle of the central fountain. Untroubled calm was the spirit of the place, hereditary comfort.
I have looked so often, John. Yet, I find nothing.
We must find not a little money, but a fortune, and we must find it in six months, John answered, his low voice just reaching his listener. There is no way to earn it, we know. Inside the law there are ways to acquire it. Wall Street, for instance; a new popular song or two, an inexplicable conjuring trick, or a fresh breakfast food. But we have no such talents, you and I; we are just the ordinary gentlemen of leisure,—dilettanti. We are useless, within the limits set for us. Outside the limits, outside the law—
The suggestion was left unfinished, the two men falling silent before it. They were young; so young that the morning mists of romance still blurred the sharp landscape of reality, and for the moment, daring appealed more than endurance.
We could not do anything low, Robert demurred hesitatingly. Not about the mortgages or business tangles, John.
No, no, John agreed, flushing. Of course not that. I suppose there is an honor even in crime, a class distinction. Sir Henry Morgan probably despised a common thief, and Paul Clifford would not pick his neighbor's pocket at dinner. No; we will pay our inherited debts, if we have to steal for it. What a comédie-héroïque !
Robert regarded him seriously.