"No; it doesn't sound absurd," she said.
"The idea of mine?—how to carry it out? Ways and means were not hard to find. I went to"—he mentioned a name—"an old friend of my father's. He thought I was a fool," bruskly, "but in the end he approved, or seemed to. Anyhow, I persuaded him to take all my bonds, securities and the rest of (for me) cursed stuff. At the end of a certain time, if I wanted back the few millions I hadn't yet run through, he was to give them to me, minus commissions, wage, etc."
"You mean," said the girl, "that was the way you took to go back to the beginning, as you call it?" Her eyes were like stars. "You practically gave away all your money so as to start by yourself."
"How could I start with it?" he asked, with a faint smile. "Don't you see, Betty"—in a momentary eagerness he forgot himself—"there couldn't be any compromising? Besides, it came to me—you will laugh"—she did not laugh—"that some day, somewhere else, if not here, I'd have to make that beginning, to be something myself. Remember that old Hindu fellow with a red turban who sat on your front lawn, beneath the palms, and had the women gathered around him in a kind of hypnotic state? He said something like that—I thought him an old fakir at the time. He used a lot of flowery language, but I guess, boiled down, it meant start at the bottom of the ladder. Build yourself up, the way my father did," with a certain wistful pride. "You remember him?"
Her head moved. "Fine looking, wasn't he?" ruminatively. "He got there with his hands and brains, and honestly. While I hadn't ever used either. I hope," he broke off, "all this doesn't sound like preaching."
"No," she said.
An instant his gaze lingered on her. "You're sleepy now," he spoke suddenly.
"No, I am not. You found it a little hard, at first?"
"A little. When a man is relaxed and the reaction is on him—" He stopped.
"Tell me—tell me all," she breathed. "Every bit of it, Harry."