He asked her, "What do you mean--'not that that matters'?"
She made a little face at him. "Marko, you're not to snap me up like that. I've noticed it two or three times. I mean it doesn't matter what a man does. It's what he is that matters."
He laughed. "Well, that lets me down pretty badly if that's the estimate. I'm awful, you know."
She shook her head. "Oh, you're not so bad."
"You don't know me. I've been growing awful these years."
"Tell me how awful you are. Does Mabel think you're awful?"
"You ask her! I'm the most unsatisfactory sort of person it's possible to meet. Really."
"What, like hearing how unsatisfactory I am?"
"I like hearing you talk. You've got rather a nice voice--I used to tell you that, didn't I?--and I like hearing you stumbling about trying to explain your ideas. You've got ideas. You're rather an ideary person. Go on. Why are you unsatisfactory?"
How familiar her voice was on that note,--caressing, drawing him on.
He said, "I'll tell you, Nona. I'm unsatisfactory because I've got the most infernal habit of seeing things from about twenty points of view instead of one. For other people, that's the most irritating thing you can possibly imagine. I've no convictions; that's the trouble. I swing about from side to side. I always can see the other side of a case, and you know, that's absolutely fatal--"
He was going to say, "To happiness"; but he looked at her and then looked away. "Well, to everything; to success. You can't possibly be successful if you haven't got convictions--what I call bald-headed convictions. That's what success is, Nona, the success of politicians and big men whose names are always in the papers. It's that: seeing a thing from only one point of view and going all out for it from that point of view. Convictions. Not mucking about all round a thing and seeing it from about twenty different sides like I do. You know, you can't possibly pull out this big, booming sort of stuff they call success if you're going to see anybody's point of view but your own. You must have convictions. Yes, and narrower than that, not convictions but conviction. Only one conviction--that you're right and that every one who thinks differently from you is wrong to blazes." He laughed. "And I'm dashed if I ever _think_ I'm right, let alone conviction of it. I can always see the bits of right on the other side of the argument. That's me. Dash me!"