"Well then why don't you try another?" Nick asked.

"One has the manner that one can, and mine moreover's a part of my
little system."

"Ah if you make so much of your little system you're no better than any
one else," Nick returned as they went on.

"I don't pretend to be better, for we're all miserable sinners; I only
pretend to be bad in a pleasanter, brighter way--by what I can see. It's
the simplest thing in the world; just take for granted our right to be
happy and brave. What's essentially kinder and more helpful than that,
what's more beneficent? But the tradition of dreariness, of stodginess,
of dull, dense, literal prose, has so sealed people's eyes that they've
ended by thinking the most natural of all things the most perverse. Why
so keep up the dreariness, in our poor little day? No one can tell me
why, and almost every one calls me names for simply asking the question.
But I go on, for I believe one can do a little good by it. I want so
much to do a little good," Gabriel Nash continued, taking his
companion's arm. "My persistence is systematic: don't you see what I
mean? I won't be dreary--no, no, no; and I won't recognise the
necessity, or even, if there be any way out of it, the accident, of
dreariness in the life that surrounds me. That's enough to make people
stare: they're so damned stupid!"

"They think you so damned impudent," Nick freely explained.

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