The sort of castle in the air which you build, is not to be had by inheritance, but to be taken by storm.

You must fight for it." "Or work for it." "Or win it in some way off your own bat; and no lord ever sat prouder in his castle than you sit in those that you build from day to day in your imagination.

And you sally forth and do all manner of magnificent deeds.
You help distressed damsels--poor me, for instance; and you attack enormous dragons--shall I say that Sophie Gordeloup is the latest dragon ?--and you wish well to your enemies, such as Hugh and Archie; and you cut down enormous forests, which means your coming miracles as an engineer--and then you fall gloriously in love.

When is that last to be, Harry ?" "I suppose, according to all precedent, that must be done with the distressed damsel," he said--fool that he was.
"No, Harry, no; you shall take your young, fresh, generous heart to a better market than that; not but that the distressed damsel will ever remember what might once have been." He knew that he was playing on the edge of a precipice--that he was fluttering as a moth round a candle.

He knew that it behooved him now at once to tell her all his tale as to Stratton and Florence Burton--that if he could tell it now, the pang would be over and the danger gone.