"Nicholas Dormer," this personage remarked at last, "for grossness of immorality I think I've never seen your equal."
"That sounds so well," Nick returned, "that I hesitate to risk spoiling it by wishing it explained."
"Don't you recognise in any degree the grand idea of duty?"
"If I don't grasp it with a certain firmness I'm a deadly failure, for I was quite brought up on it," Nick said.
"Then you're indeed the wretchedest failure I know. Life is ugly, after all."
"Do I gather that you yourself recognise obligations of the order you allude to?"
"Do you 'gather'?" Nash stared. "Why, aren't they the very flame of my faith, the burden of my song?"
"My dear fellow, duty is doing, and I've inferred that you think rather poorly of doing—that it spoils one's style."
"Doing wrong, assuredly."
"But what do you call right? What's your canon of certainty there?" Nick asked.