voking!" Nick knowingly returned.

"So it would appear, to the great majority of one's fellow-mortals; and
I well remember the pang with which I originally made that discovery. It
darkened my spirit at a time when I had no thought of evil. What we
like, when we're unregenerate, is that a new-comer should give us a
password, come over to our side, join our little camp or religion, get
into our little boat, in short, whatever it is, and help us to row it.
It's natural enough; we're mostly in different tubs and cockles,
paddling for life. Our opinions, our convictions and doctrines and
standards, are simply the particular thing that will make the boat
go--_our boat_, naturally, for they may very often be just the thing
that will sink another. If you won't get in people generally hate you."

"Your metaphor's very lame," said Nick. "It's the overcrowded boat that
goes to the bottom."

"Oh I'll give it another leg or two! Boats can be big, in the infinite
of space, and a doctrine's a raft that floats the better the more
passengers it carries. A passenger jumps over from time to time, not so
much from fear of sinking as from a want of interest in the course or
the company. He swims, he plunges, he dives, he dips down and visits the
fishes and the mermaids and the submarine caves; he goes from craft to
craft and splashes about, on his own account, in the blue, cool water.
The regenerate, as I call them, are the passengers who jump over in
search of better fun. I jumped over long ago."

"And now of course you're at the head of the regenerate; for, in your
turn"--Nick found the figure delightful--"you all form a select school
of porpoises."

"Not a bit, and I know nothing about heads--in the sense you mean. I've
grown a tail if you will; I'm the merman wandering free. It's the
jolliest of trades!"

Before they had gone many steps further Nick Dormer stopped short with a
question. "I say, my dear fellow, do you mind mentioning to me whether
you're the greatest humbug and charlatan on earth, or a genuine
intelligence, one that has sifted things for itself?"

"I do lead your poor British wit a dance--I'm so sorry," Nash replied
benignly. "But I'm very sincere. And I _have_ tried to straighten out
things a bit for myself."

"Then why do you give people such a handle?"

"Such a handle?"

"For thinking you're an--for thinking you're a mere _farceur_."

"I daresay it's my manner: they're so unused to any sort of candour."