'Do you realise that it is nearly fifteen years since we have seen
each other? The history of those fifteen years, so far as I am
concerned, has been the history of a single uninterrupted
_deveine_--one continuous run of ill-luck, against every probability
of the game, against every effort I could make to play my cards
effectively. When I started out, one might have thought, I had the
best of chances. I had studied hard; I worked hard. I surely had as
much general intelligence, as much special knowledge, as much apparent
talent, as my competitors. And the stuff I produced seemed good to
you, to my friends, and not wholly bad to me. It was musicianly, it
was melodious, it was sincere; the critics all praised it; but--it
never took on! The public wouldn't have it. What did it lack? I don't
know. At last I couldn't even get it published--invisible ink! And I
had a wife to support.'
He paused for a minute; then: 'You see,' he said, 'we made the
mistake, when we were young, of believing, against wise authority,
that it _was_ in mortals to command success, that he could command it
who deserved it. We believed that the race would be to the swift, the
battle to the strong; that a man was responsible for his own destiny,
that he'd get what he merited. We believed that honest labour couldn't
go unrewarded.
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