"I don't know how it has gone," said Morgan, helplessly. "I made bad investments, I lent some of it away, and I suppose I spent the rest."
"And you wanted to sell your soul to a publisher for fifty pounds a year! The fact is, I suppose, you don't know the value of money at all—it just melts away."
"For me money has no value. I don't care a pin about it," said Morgan, doggedly.
"That's scarcely the point," said Ingram. "Whether you care about it or not, you'll have to raise some of it. Let me interview your father. The fault is his. He knew you were a poet, and yet he was imprudent enough to give you capital instead of an income."
"It was my doing. I wanted to be perfectly free and independent of him—not to be worried by sordid complaints and lectures and warnings with each quarter's cheque. I told him so frankly, and I so annoyed him even at the end that he gave me the money, saying he did not care what I did with it. I certainly intend to stand by the arrangement I made with him. That money was to be the last, and the last it shall be."
"You are difficult," said Ingram.
"You must be indulgent."
Ingram lighted a new cigar and appeared lost in reflection a little while.
"There is only one thing, then, I can suggest," he said at last.
"And that is?" asked Morgan, in a tone that clearly indicated his belief that he was beyond all suggestions.