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The Inheritors by Ford Madox Ford;Joseph Conrad
page 219 of 225 (97%)

"In the name of God," I shouted, "what do you work for--what have you
been plotting and plotting for, if not to enjoy your life at the last?"
He made a small indefinite motion of ignorance, as if I had propounded
to him a problem that he could not solve, that he did not think worth
the solving.

It came to me as the confirmation of a suspicion--that motion. They had
no joy, these people who were to supersede us; their clear-sightedness
did nothing more for them than just that enabling them to spread
desolation among us and take our places. It had been in her manner all
along, she was like Fate; like the abominable Fate that desolates the
whole length of our lives; that leaves of our hopes, of our plans,
nothing but a hideous jumble of fragments like those of statues, smashed
by hammers; the senseless, inscrutable, joyless Fate that we hate, and
that debases us forever and ever. She had been all that to me ... and to
how many more?

"I used to be a decent personality," I vociferated at him. "Do you
hear--decent. I could look a man in the face. And you cannot even enjoy.
What do you come for? What do you live for? What is at the end of it
all?"

"Ah, if I knew ..." he answered, negligently.




CHAPTER NINETEEN

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