Lydia felt a helpless yearning, because things were being so hard for him. She wished for Anne who always knew, and with a word could help you out when your elucidation failed.
"You see," Jeff was going on, "there's this kind of a brute born into the world now, the kind that knows how to make money, and as soon as he's discovered his knack, he's got the mania to make more. It's an obligation, an obsession. Maybe it's only the game. He's in it, just as much as if he'd got a thousand men behind him, all looting territory. It might be for a woman. But it's the game. And it's a queer game. It cuts him off. He's outside."
And here Lydia had a simple and very childlike thought, so inevitable to her that she spoke without consideration.
"You were outside, too."
Jeff gave a little shake of the head, as if that didn't matter now he was here and explaining to her.
"And the devil of it is, after they're once outside they don't know they are."
"Do you mean, when they've done something and been found guilty and—"
"I mean all along the line. When they've begun to think they'll make good, when they've begun to play the game."
"For money?"
"Yes, for money, for pretty gold and dirty bills and silver. That's what it amounts to, when you get down to it, behind all the bank balances and equities. There's a film that grows over your eyes, you look at nothing else. You don't think about—" his voice dropped and he glanced out at the walled orchard as if it were even a sacred place—"you don't think about grass, and dirt, and things. You're thinking about the game."