“Why not?”
“His people might object.”
“Who are his people?”
“How do I know? What a suspicious chap you are.”
Dan shrugged his shoulders. “You are not an actor, you never will be; you are not a business man. You've made a start at writing, that's your proper work. Why not go on with it?”
“I can't get on with it. That one thing was accepted, and never paid for; everything else comes back regularly, just as before. Besides, I can go on writing wherever I am.”
“You've got friends here to help you.”
“They don't believe I can do anything but write nonsense.”
“Well, clever nonsense is worth writing. It's better than stodgy sense: literature is blocked up with that. Why not follow their advice?”
“Because I don't believe they are right. I'm not a clown; I don't mean to be. Because a man has a sense of humour it doesn't follow he has nothing else. That is only one of my gifts, and by no means the highest. I have knowledge of human nature, poetry, dramatic instinct. I mean to prove it to you all. Vane's the only man that understands me.”