"Save anything?" said Forshay, struck by the wildness in the young man's look.
"I can settle my account here, I'm glad to say," said Bojo with difficulty. "That's something. I think I'll pull out with around fifteen thousand. Hope you did better."
"Thanks, awfully."
"Cleaned out?" said Bojo, startled.
"Beautiful. Clean. Well, good-by, Tom, and—better luck next time."
Bojo looked up hastily, aghast. But Forshay was smiling. He nodded and went out.
Bojo reached the court still in a daze, unable to comprehend where it had all gone—this fortune that was on his fingers yesterday. Yesterday! If he had only closed up yesterday! Then through the haze of his numbed sense of loss came a poignant, terrifying recall to actuality. He stood pledged to Drake for the amount of $50,000, and he could not make good even a third! If the pool had been wiped out—and he had slight hopes of saving anything there—he would have to procure $35,000 somewhere, somehow, or face to Drake and his own self-respect that he could not redeem his own word. What could he say, what excuse offer! If the pool had collapsed—he was dishonored.
The realization came slowly. For a long while, sitting in the embrasure of the bay window—his forehead against the cold panes, it seemed to him incredible the way he had gone these last six months; as though it had all been a fever that had peopled his horizon with unreal figures, phantasies of hot dreams.
But the unblinkable, waking fact was there. His word had been pledged for $50,000 to Drake, to the father of the girl he was to marry. Marry! At the thought he laughed aloud bitterly. That, too, was a thing that had vanished in the bubble of dreams. He thought of his father, to whom he would have to go; but his pride recoiled. He would never go to him for aid—a failure and a bankrupt. Rather beg Drake on his knees for time to work out the debt than that!
"How did I do it? What possessed me! What madness possessed me!" he said wearily again and again.