Has it ever occurred to you that middle age ought to be called the age of denial ?" Then his tone changed.
"But I wonder if you begin to realize how fortunate you are?
You have the collector's instinct and the means to gratify it.

To discover with you is to possess--don't you understand the blessing of that?
You love beauty as a favoured daughter, not as one of the disinherited who can only peer through the windows of her palace." "But you also--you love beauty as I do." "But I can't own it--not as you do." He was speaking frankly.

"I haven't the means.

At least what I have I have made myself, and therefore I guard it more carefully.

It is only those who have once been poor who are really under the curse of money, for that curse is the inability to understand that money is less valuable than anything else on earth that you happen to need or desire.