for interrupting you. It was only to plead guilty."

"I cannot admit that it is the first of all duties, but it is sometimes
perhaps the hardest, as you say. Still, you could surely do yourself
more justice without any great effort. If you wish to live humbly, you
can do so without pretending to be an uneducated man and without
taking an irritating and absurd name. Why on earth do you call yourself
Smilash?"

"I confess that the name has been a failure. I took great pains, in
constructing it, to secure a pleasant impression. It is not a mere
invention, but a compound of the words smile and eyelash. A smile
suggests good humor; eyelashes soften the expression and are the only
features that never blemish a face. Hence Smilash is a sound that should
cheer and propitiate. Yet it exasperates. It is really very odd that it
should have that effect, unless it is that it raises expectations which
I am unable to satisfy."

Miss Wilson looked at him doubtfully. He remained perfectly grave. There
was a pause. Then, as if she had made up her mind to be offended, she
said, "Good-morning," shortly.

"Good-morning, Miss Wilson. The son of a millionaire, like the son of a
king, is seldom free from mental disease. I am just mad enough to be a
mountebank. If I were a little madder, I should perhaps really believe
myself Smilash instead of merely acting him. Whether you ask me to
forget myself for a moment, or to remember myself for a moment, I
reply that I am the son of my father, and cannot. With my egotism, my
charlatanry, my tongue, and my habit of having my own way, I am fit for
no calling but that of saviour of mankind--just of the sort they like."