"What's the use to discuss it, I've made up my mind—and that's the end of it."
"But I want to know," Bivens persisted. "Your silence on the subject makes me furious every time I think of it. How any human being outside of an insane asylum could be so foolish is beyond my ken."
"I know it is, so let's drop it," Stuart interrupted.
"I won't drop it. You rile me. You're the only man I've struck on this earth that didn't have his price."
"Perhaps we have different ways of fixing values. To me value is a thing which gives life. If it brings death is it valuable? You are not yet fifty years old and a wreck. What's the use? What can you do with your money now?"
"It brings luxury, ease, indulgence, power, admiration, wonder, and the envy of the world."
"What's the good of luxury if you can't enjoy it; ease if you never take it; indulgence when you have lost the capacity to play; power if you're too busy getting more to stop and wield it?"
"Jim, you're the biggest fool I ever knew, without a single exception," Bivens said, petulantly.
Stuart glanced anxiously toward the yacht. It was three o'clock. The tide had ebbed half out and there was barely enough water on the flats now for the tender to cross. It was snowing harder and the wind had begun to inch in toward the north.
"No more ducks to-day, Cal," Stuart said briskly, returning to his tone of friendly comradeship. "We've got to get away from here. It's getting colder every minute. It will be freezing before night."