Old as I am I wished to seek a strange land, a civilisation to which I am a stranger, so as to find a new life in the contemplation of your high fortunes, of your triumphs, of your happiness.

For that I bore patiently the burden of work, of disappointment, of humiliation amongst these savages here, and I had it all nearly in my grasp." He looked at his daughter's attentive face and jumped to his feet upsetting the chair.
"Do you hear?
I had it all there; so; within reach of my hand." He paused, trying to keep down his rising anger, and failed.
"Have you no feeling ?" he went on.

"Have you lived without hope ?" Nina's silence exasperated him; his voice rose, although he tried to master his feelings.
"Are you content to live in this misery and die in this wretched hole?
Say something, Nina; have you no sympathy?
Have you no word of comfort for me?
I that loved you so." He waited for a while for an answer, and receiving none shook his fist in his daughter's face.
"I believe you are an idiot!" he yelled.
He looked round for the chair, picked it up and sat down stiffly.

His anger was dead within him, and he felt ashamed of his outburst, yet relieved to think that now he had laid clear before his daughter the inner meaning of his life.

He thought so in perfect good faith, deceived by the emotional estimate of his motives, unable to see the crookedness of his ways, the unreality of his aims, the futility of his regrets.