You are the wrong sort of breed for common shirking cowards.
Why, man, you might get the Victoria Cross ten times over with ease, as
far as that goes. Only you wouldn't, for you are something much more
subtle and recondite than a coward."
It was Lewis's turn for the request. "I am prepared to hear," he said.
"A fool! An arrant, extraordinary fool! A fool of quality and parts, a
fool who is the best fellow in the world and who has every virtue a man
can wish, but at the same time a conspicuous monument of folly. And it
is this that I have come to speak about."
Lewis sat back in his chair with his eyes fixed on the glowing coal.
"I want you to make it all plain," he said slowly. "I know it all
already; I have got the dull, dead consciousness of it in my heart, but
I want to hear it put into words." And he set his lips like a man in
pain.
"It is hard," said Wratislaw, "devilish hard, but I've got to try." He
knocked out the ashes from his pipe and leaned forward.
"What would you call the highest happiness, Lewie?" he asked.
"The sense of competence," was the answer, given without hesitation.
"Right. And what do we mean by competence? Not success! God knows it
is something very different from success! Any fool may be successful,
if the gods wish to hurt him. Competence means that splendid joy in
your own powers and the approval of your own heart, which great men feel
always and lesser men now and again at favoured intervals.
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