When he spent money he spent lavishly,
generously, recklessly. When he wasted time he wasted it profligately.
And now that he abandoned an old position he did it as thoroughly as
he had dissipated his father's money. He was plunging from what had so
long seemed to him a great height. Plunging; not cautiously lowering
himself inch by inch down a dizzy precipice of self-respect, not
looking the while for the first ledge upon which he might rest;
plunging headlong from the zenith of self-conceit to the nadir of
self-contempt. And the depths into which he hurled himself seemed to
him very deep, very black.
He ignored considerations by the way. That he had been handicapped in
the race did not suggest itself to him to comfort him. He merely saw
that the race was on and that he was far in the rear, choked with the
dust of the going. He saw, and saw clearly, that of all the men who
took their dollar a day from John Crawford he, Greek Conniston, did
the least to earn his. That he was not only not the best man on the
range, but that he was the poorest man. He was just his father's son.
_A man's son, not a man!_
He had not eaten supper, had forgotten that he had not eaten. Long he
sat in the thickening night, alone, feeling the part of a man marooned
by his dawning understanding upon a desert island, vast, impassable,
restless seas between him and his race.
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