“I cannot bear the idea of earning my living in this country; you yourself have always discouraged it. Besides, I must earn much more than my living. That is imperative. Especially now.” He checked himself; he was not going to speak to the Dominé of the Baroness’s shattered hopes. But Ursula’s father understood.
Involuntarily both men’s eyes wandered away across the fields towards the chimneys of the Horst embedded in foliage. Then their glances met.
“Never. Never. Never,” repeated the Dominé, passionately.
“In a few years I shall probably want money,” declared Otto, decisively. “I shall want a good deal of money, I expect. I must do what I can to earn it. You will say, perhaps, like my father, that till now I have tried and failed. All the more reason to try again.”
“No, I don’t say that,” responded the Dominé, honestly. “You know I don’t. But, Otto, I can’t let my Ursula go to Java.”
Otto did not immediately return to the charge. Presently he began again, in quite a low voice, almost a whisper, under the laughing blue sky,
“More than fifteen years ago a young man came to you, complaining bitterly that he was sick of his empty, meaningless existence. He was tired of life, he said. And you answered, ‘Go and work. The people who work have no time to get tired.’”
“But I never said, ‘Go and amass money,’” interrupted the old man, lifting a shaky arm.
“You said, ‘Spend your own money.’ How well I remember your saying that the night I came to you! ‘You are a grown man. Don’t spend any one’s money but your own.’ It came to me like a revelation. It was so directly opposed to what I had been taught from my youth. In my world they say, ‘Only don’t earn money. You may do anything except that.’”