stock were always quiet ones:
the transaction remained, so far, between him and Akers, and could be
kept between them.

The possibility just edged itself into Eugene's mind; that is, he let it
become part of his perceptions long enough for it to prove to him that
it was actually a possibility. Then he half started with disgust that he
should be even idly considering such a thing over his last cigar for
the night, in his library. "No!" And he threw the cigar into the empty
fireplace and went to bed.

His bitterness for himself might have worn away, but never his
bitterness for Isabel. He took that thought to bed with him--and it was
true that nothing George could do would ever change this bitterness of
Eugene. Only George's mother could have changed it.

And as Eugene fell asleep that night, thinking thus bitterly of Georgie,
Georgie in the hospital was thinking of Eugene. He had come "out of
ether" with no great nausea, and had fallen into a reverie, though now
and then a white sailboat staggered foolishly into the small ward where
he lay. After a time he discovered that this happened only when he tried
to open his eyes and look about him; so he kept his eyes shut, and his
thoughts were clearer.

He thought of Eugene Morgan and of the Major; they seemed to be the
same person for awhile, but he managed to disentangle them and even to
understand why he had confused them. Long ago his grandfather had been
the most striking figure of success in the town: "As rich as Major
Amberson!" they used to say. Now it was Eugene. "If I had Eugene
Morgan's money," he would hear the workmen day-dreaming at the chemical
works; or, "If Eugene Morgan had hold of this place you'd see things
hum!" And the boarders at the table d'hote spoke of "the Morgan Place"
as an eighteenth-century Frenchman spoke of Versailles. Like his uncle,
George had perceived that the "Morgan Place" was the new Amberson
Mansion. His reverie went back to the palatial days of the Mansion, in
his boyhood, when he would gallop his pony up the driveway and order
the darkey stable-men about, while they whooped and obeyed, and his
grandfather, observing from a window, would laugh and call out to him,
"That's right, Georgie. Make those lazy rascals jump!" He remembered his
gay young uncles, and how the town was eager concerning everything about
them, and about himself. What a clean, pretty town it had been! And in
his reverie be saw like a pageant before him the magnif