His comparative blindness had made the good faith, which in its turn had made the soil propitious for the flower of the supreme idea.

He had had to LIKE forging and sweating, he had had to like polishing and piling up his arms.

They were things at least he had had to believe he liked, just as he had believed he liked transcendent calculation and imaginative gambling all for themselves, the creation of "interests" that were the extinction of other interests, the livid vulgarity, even, of getting in, or getting out, first.

That had of course been so far from really the case--with the supreme idea, all the while, growing and striking deep, under everything, in the warm, rich earth.

He had stood unknowing, he had walked and worked where it was buried, and the fact itself, the fact of his fortune, would have been a barren fact enough if the first sharp tender shoot had never struggled into day.