Page 804 - of-human-bondage-

ket’s stagnant, there are no buyers.’
‘But they’re marked down at one and an eighth.’
‘Oh yes, but that doesn’t mean anything. You can’t get
that for them.’
Philip did not say anything for a moment. He was trying
to collect himself.
‘D’you mean to say they’re worth nothing at all?’
‘Oh, I don’t say that. Of course they’re worth something,
but you see, nobody’s buying them now.’
‘Then you must just sell them for what you can get.’
Macalister looked at Philip narrowly. He wondered
whether he was very hard hit.
‘I’m awfully sorry, old man, but we’re all in the same boat.
No one thought the war was going to hang on this way. I put
you into them, but I was in myself too.’
‘It doesn’t matter at all,’ said Philip. ‘One has to take one’s
chance.’
He moved back to the table from which he had got up to
talk to Macalister. He was dumfounded; his head suddenly
began to ache furiously; but he did not want them to think
him unmanly. He sat on for an hour. He laughed feverishly
at everything they said. At last he got up to go.
‘You take it pretty coolly,’ said Macalister, shaking hands
with him. ‘I don’t suppose anyone likes losing between three
and four hundred pounds.’
When Philip got back to his shabby little room he flung
himself on his bed, and gave himself over to his despair. He
kept on regretting his folly bitterly; and though he told him-
self that it was absurd to regret for what had happened was

0