“You are talking in enigmas surely,” she said. “Nothing of that sort could possibly happen to you. They tell me that the Bekwando Land shares are priceless, and that you must make millions.”
“This afternoon,” he said, raising his glass to his lips and draining it, “I think that I must have dozed upon the lawn at Ascot. I sat there for some time, back amongst the trees, and I think that I must have fallen to sleep. There was a whisper in my ears and I saw myself stripped of everything. How was it? I forget now! A concession repudiated, a bank failure, a big slump—what does it matter? The money was gone, and I was simply myself again, Scarlett Trent, a labourer, penniless and of no account.”
“It must have been an odd sensation,” she said thoughtfully.
“I will tell you what it made me realise,” he said. “I am drifting into a dangerous position. I am linking myself to a little world to whom, personally, I am as nothing and less than nothing. I am tolerated for my belongings! If by any chance I were to lose these, what would become of me?”
“You are a man,” she said, looking at him earnestly; “you have the nerve and wits of a man, what you have done before you might do again.”
“In the meantime I should be ostracised.”
“By a good many people, no doubt.”
He held his peace for a time, and ate and drank what was set before him. He was conscious that his was scarcely a dinner-table manner. He was too eager, too deeply in earnest. People opposite were looking at them, Ernestine talked to her vis-a-vis. It was some time before he spoke again, when he did he took up the thread of their conversation where he had left it.
“By the majority, of course,” he said. “I have wondered sometimes whether there might be any one who would be different.”
“I should be sorry,” she said demurely.