At this Nash stopped him short with a small cry, and, turning his eyes, Nick saw under the lamps of the quay that he had brought a flush of pain into his friend's face. "I don't strike you that way?" "Oh 'me!' Wasn't it just admitted that I don't in the least make you out?" "That's the last thing!" Nash declared, as if he were thinking the idea over, with an air of genuine distress. "But with a little patience we'll clear it up together--if you care enough about it," he added more cheerfully. Letting his companion proceed again he continued: "Heaven help us all, what do people mean by impudence? There are many, I think, who don't understand its nature or its limits; and upon my word I've literally seen mere quickness of intelligence or of perception, the jump of a step or two, a little whirr of the wings of talk, mistaken for it. Yes, I've encountered men and women who thought you impudent if you weren't simply so stupid as they. The only impudence is unprovoked, or even mere dull, aggression, and I indignantly protest that I'm never guilty of _that_ clumsiness. Ah for what do they take one, with _their_ beastly presumption? Even to defend myself sometimes I've to make believe to myself that I care. I always feel as if I didn't successfully make others think so. Perhaps they see impudence in that. But I daresay the offence is in the things that I take, as I say, for granted; for if one tries to be pleased one passes perhaps inevitably for being pleased above all with one's self. That's really not my case--I find my capacity for pleasure deplorably below the mark I've set. This is why, as I've told you, I cultivate it, I try to bring it up. And I'm actuated by positive benevolence; I've that impudent pretension. That's what I mean by being the same to every one, by having only one manner. If one's conscious and ingenious to that end what's the harm--when one's motives are so pure? By never, _never_ making the concession, one may end by becoming a perceptible force for good." "What concession are you talking about, in God's name?" Nick demanded. "Why, that we're here all for dreariness. It's impossible to grant it sometimes if you wish to deny it ever." "And what do you mean then by dreariness? That's modern slang and terribly vague. Many good things are dreary--virtue and decency and charity, and perseverance and courage and honour." "Say at once that life's dreary, my dear fellow!" Gabriel Nash exclaimed. "That's on the whole my besetting impression."