He had bartered away the best years of his life to the gold god, and he was satiated with the success of this transaction.
In all that time he had not mourned, as he mourned to-night, the loss of the twin-sister who had been as his second and better self.

He had not realised till he sat alone in the place, where as a boy he had never known solitude, how utterly flat and undesirable was the future that stretched out like a trackless desert at his feet.
And in that moment he would have cast away the whole bulk of his great possessions for one precious day of youth out of the many that had fled away for ever.
A woman's laugh, high, inconsequent, rang through the great coffee-room, and all but one looked towards the corner whence it proceeded.

An American voice began at once to explain the joke with considerable volubility.
Bernard Merefleet rose from his chair with a frowning countenance and made his way down to the old stone quay below the hotel..