UNCLE RICHARD

No, no, Richard! You were so cold, so silent. You made it impossible for
us to help you.

RICHARD

I suppose I did seem cold. That's the instinct of inexperienced natures
when they are desperate. But it would have been so easy to break through
with one kind word or act.

UNCLE RICHARD

There, there! How glad I am that conditions are changed!

RICHARD

Changed, yes, but it was I who changed them! The shock of poverty was
terrible at first, not because I set too much value on money, nor because
I was unwilling to work, but because I felt I had no power of attack. My
nature was introspective, I lived in an epic of my own creation. My
strength and my courage were wrapped up in dreams, and seemed to have no
relation to the practical world. I could have faced the devil himself for
an ideal, but to make my own living--that was the nightmare!...

That was why I was so cold, so silent. If you had said one human thing,
straight from your heart to mine, I should have been comforted. In a case
like that, as I now know, it is not money a man wants, even if he himself
thinks it is. No. It is just sympathy, the right word that renews his
courage and arms him against the new circumstances by making him feel he