"There it is, you see." He paused. "Have you any idea how much this thing is going to cost?"
"Approximately, yes."
"And have you any idea how much we—how much Daisy's fortune amounts to?"
"None whatever," I hastened to assert.
He looked relieved. "Well, we simply can't do it—and live."
"Live?"
"Paul didn't live," he said impatiently. "I can't ask a woman with two children to think of—hang it, she's under no actual obligation—" He rose and began to walk the floor. Presently he paused and halted in front of me, defensively, as Paul had once done years before. "It's not that I've lost the sense of my obligation—it grows keener with the growth of my happiness; but my position's a delicate one—"
"Ah, my dear fellow—"
"You do see it? I knew you would." (Yes, he was duller!) "That's the point. I can't strip my wife and children to carry out a plan—a plan so nebulous that even its inventor.... The long and short of it is that the whole scheme must be re-studied, reorganized. Paul lived in a world of dreams."
I rose and tossed my cigar into the fire. "There were some things he never dreamed of," I said.