“You think Carnaby is a better man than I?” I said.
“No!” she cried, stung to speech. “No!”
“You think we’re unsubstantial. You’ve listened to all these rumours
Boom has started because we talked of a newspaper of our own. When you
are with me you know I’m a man; when you get away from me you think I’m
a cheat and a cad.... There’s not a word of truth in the things they
say about us. I’ve been slack. I’ve left things. But we have only to
exert ourselves. You do not know how wide and far we have spread our
nets. Even now we have a coup—an expedition—in hand. It will put us on
a footing.”...
Her eyes asked mutely and asked in vain that I would cease to boast of
the very qualities she admired in me.
In the night I could not sleep for thinking of that talk and the vulgar
things I had said in it. I could not understand the drift my mind had
taken. I was acutely disgusted. And my unwonted doubts about myself
spread from a merely personal discontent to our financial position. It
was all very well to talk as I had done of wealth and power and
peerages, but what did I know nowadays of my uncle’s position? Suppose
in the midst of such boasting and confidence there came some turn I did
not suspect, some rottenness he had concealed from me? I resolved I had
been playing with aeronautics long enough; that next morning I would go
to him and have things clear between us.