"I am building upon sand," he said to himself. "In business, in the law, in
almost any other career to-day's work would be to-morrow's capital. As it
is, I am ever more and more a slave. To be free I ought to be poor or rich.
And I cannot endure the thought of poverty again. I must be rich."
The idea allured him to a degree that made him ashamed of himself.
Sometimes, when he was talking to Marian or writing editorials, all in the
strain of high principle and contempt for sordidness, he would flush at the
thought that he was in reality a good deal of a hypocrite. "I'm expressing
the ideals I ought to have, the ideals I used to have, not the ideals I
have."
But the clearer this discrepancy became to him and the wider the gap
between what he ought to think and what he really did think, the more
strenuously he protested to himself against himself, and the more fiercely
he denounced in public the very poison he was himself taking.
"I am living in a tainted atmosphere," he said to Marian. "We all are. I
fight against the taint but how can I hope to avoid the consequences if I
persist in breathing it, in absorbing it at every pore of my body?"
"I don't understand you." Marian was used to his moods of self-criticism
and did not attach much importance to them.
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