ander 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 of the game.
What was the matter with the bank? The manager?"

His voice was almost monotonous in its quietness. It was as though he
told the story of something which had passed beyond chance or change.
As it unfolded to her understanding, she had seated herself near to his
bed. The door of the room was open, and in view outside on the landing
sat Madame Bulteel reading. She was not, however, near enough to hear
the conversation.

Ingolby's voice was low, but it sounded as loud as a waterfall in the
ears of the girl, who, in a few weeks, had travelled great distances on
the road called Experience, that other name for life.

"It was the manager?" he repeated.

"Yes, they say so," she answered. "He speculated with bank money."

"In what?"

"In your railways," she answered hesitatingly. "Curious--I dreamed
that," Ingolby remarked quietly, and leaned down and stroked the dog
lyi