"Do be serious." Dick spoke lightly; all the same, he felt uneasy.
"I am serious," replied Romanoff. "With wealth like yours, you are master of the world; you can get all the world has to give."
"I wish I could."
"I tell you you can. Money is all-powerful. Just think, if you were poor, not a hope, not an ambition could be realised."
"That won't do. Hosts of poor fellows have——"
"Risen to position and power. Just so; but it's been a terrible struggle, a ghastly grind. In most cases, too, men don't get money until they are too old to enjoy it. But you are young, and the world's at your feet. Do you want titles? You can buy them. Power? fame? Again you can get them. Beautiful women? Love? Yes, even love of a sort you can buy, if you have money. Poverty is hell; but what heaven there is in this world can be bought."
"Then you think the poor can't be happy?"
"Let me be careful in answering that. If a man has no ambitions, if he has no desire for power, then, in a negative way, he may be happy although he's poor. But to you, who are ambitious through and through—you, who see visions and dream dreams—poverty would be hell. That's why I congratulate you on all this. And my advice to you is, make the most of it. Live to enjoy, my dear fellow. Whatever your eyes desire, take it."
Dick realised that Romanoff was talking cheap cynicism, that, to use a journalistic term, it was "piffle" from thread to needle, and yet he was impressed. Again he felt the man's ascendancy over him, knew that he was swayed and moulded by a personality stronger than his own.
Dick did not try to answer him, for at that moment there was a knock at the door and a servant entered.