Read it through once

Plague take it! this language gave me the cold shudders. It scared me broad awake, and made me comprehend that I was standing on a half-inch crust, with a crater underneath. _I_ didn’t know I had been dreaming—that is, I hadn’t been allowing myself to know it for a while back; but _now_—oh, dear! Deep in debt, not a cent in the world, a lovely girl’s happiness or woe in my hands, and nothing in front of me but a salary which might never—oh, _would_ never—materialise! Oh, oh, oh, I am ruined past hope; nothing can save me!