“It’s not all spilt—some of it will be recovered.”
“My dear Macloud, there won’t be enough money recovered to buy me cigarettes for one evening. Royster has hypothecated and rehypothecated securities until no man can trace his 18 own, even if it would help him to do so. You said it would likely prove a disgraceful failure. I am absolutely sure of it.”
Macloud beat a tattoo on the window-ledge.
“What do you think of doing?” he said—“or haven’t you got to it, yet—or don’t you care to tell?”
“I’ve got to it,” replied Croyden; “and I don’t care to tell—anyone but you, Colin. I can’t stay here——”
“Not on twelve hundred a year, certainly—unless you spend the little principal you have left, and, then, drop off for good.”
“Which would be playing the baby act, sure enough.”
Macloud nodded.
“It would,” he said; “but, sometimes, men don’t look at it that way. They cannot face the loss of caste. They prefer to drop overboard by accident.”
“There isn’t going to be any dropping overboard by accident in mine,” replied Croyden. “What I’ve decided to do is this: I shall disappear. I have no debts, thank God! so no one will care to take the trouble to search for me. I shall go down to Hampton, to the little property that was left me on the Eastern Shore, there to mark time, either until I can endure it, or until I can pick out some other abode. I’ve a bunch of expensive habits to get rid of quickly, and the best 19 place for that, it seems to me, is a small town where they are impossible, as well as unnecessary.”