certainty suggesting that she would not hesitate to answer.

"We have both had big breaks in our lives," he went on. "I know that.
I've lost everything, in a way, by the break in my life, and I've an idea
that you gained everything when the break in yours came. I didn't
believe the story Jethro Fawe told me, but still I knew there was some
truth in it; something that he twisted to suit himself. I started life
feeling I could conquer the world like another Alexander or Napoleon.
I don't know that it was all conceit. It was the wish to do, to see how
far this thing on my shoulders"--he touched his head--"and this great
physical machine"--he touched his breast with a thin hand--"would carry
me. I don't believe the main idea was vicious. It was wanting to work
a human brain to its last volt of capacity, and to see what it could do.
I suppose I became selfish as I forged on. I didn't mean to be, but
concentration upon the things I had to do prevented me from being the
thing I ought to be. I wanted, as they say, to get there. I had a lot
of irons in the fire--too many--but they weren't put there deliberately.
One thing led to another, and one thing, as it were, hung upon another,
until they all got to be part of the scheme. Once they got there, I had
to carry them all on, I couldn't drop any of them; they got to be my
life. It didn't matter that it all grew bigger and bigger, and the risks
got greater and greater. I thought I could weather it through, and so I
could have done, if it hadn't been for a mistake and an accident; but the
mistake was mine. That's where the thing nips--the mistake was mine.
I took too big a risk. You see, I'd got so used to being lucky, it
seemed as if I couldn't go wrong. Everything had come my way. Ever
since I began in that Montreal railway office, after leaving college,
I hadn't a single setback. I pulled things off. I made money, and I
plumped it all into my railways and the Regent Bank; and as you said
a minute ago, the Regent Bank has closed down. That cuts me clean out