He spent the last six years of his life at St. Helena--in
excellent health and with companions that he talked
freely to--and in all the extraordinarily copious reports
of his conversations there, we don't get a single sentence
worth repeating. If you read it, you'll see he talked
like a dull, ordinary body. The greatness had entirely
evaporated from him, the moment he was put on an island
where he had nothing to do."
"Yes-s," said Thorpe, thoughtfully. He accepted the
application without any qualms about the splendour of the
comparison it rested upon. He had done the great things,
just as Semple said, and there was no room for false modesty
about them in his mind. "The trouble is," he began,
"that I did what I had always thought I wanted to do most.
I was quite certain in my mind that that was what I wanted.
And if we say now that I was wrong--if we admit that that
wasn't what I really wanted--why then, God knows what it
is I DO want. I'll be hanged if I do!"
"Come back to the City," Semple told him. "That's where
you belong."
"No--no!" Thorpe spoke with emphasis. "That's where
you're all off. I don't belong in the City at all.
I hate the whole outfit. What the devil amusement would
it be to me to take other men's money away from them?
I'd be wanting all the while to give it back to them.
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