How could Peter
prevent himself from reverencing every word that Cards uttered when one
reflected upon the number of things that Cards had done, the things that he
had seen, the places to which he had been. And Cards' attitude to Peter's
work was, if not actually contemptuous, at least something very like it.
He did not, he professed, read novels. The novelists' trade at the best,
he seemed to imply, was only a poor one, and that Peter's work was not
altogether of the best he almost openly asserted. "What can old Peter know
about life?" one could hear him saying--"Where's he been? Who's he known?
Whatever in the world has he done?"
Against this, in spite of the glitter that shone about Cards' head, Peter
might, perhaps, have stood. He reminded himself, a hundred times a day,
that one must not care about the things that other people said, one must
have one's eyes fixed upon the goal--one must be sure of oneself--what had
Galleon said?...
But there was also the effect of it all upon Clare to be considered. Clare
listened to Cards. She was, Peter gloomily considered, very largely of
Cards' opinion. The two people for whom he cared most in the world after
young Stephen who, as a critic, had not yet begun to count, thought that he
was wasting his time.
Sometimes, as he sat at his deal table, fighting with a growing sense of
disillusionment that was like nothing so much as a child's first discovery
that its beautiful doll is stuffed with straw, he would wish passionately,
vehemently for the return of those days when he had sat in his little
bedroom writing "Reuben Hallard" with Norah Monogue, and dear Mr.
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