"It's what's bred into you," he said, that comes out. Now if I was a really rich man, I think I could learn to carry it off with the best of them, out here. But when it comes to being the real thing, why, I know it would be beyond me, so there you are."
"But can one be sure?" she cried.
"I think I can. I can see the difference between common and uncommon. I can do more than that. I can see the difference between gentlemen who haven't got the gift, and those that have. Take Lord Washburn, for example. He's a gentleman all right—he comes of an old family, they tell me. But I doubt very much if he's any better than I am."
"Why should he be?" cried Harriet.
"What I mean is," said William James, "he hasn't got the gift, you know."
"The gift of what? " said Harriet, puzzled.
"How shall I put it? The gift that you've got, now: and that Mr Somers has as well: and that people out here don't have."
"But that may only be manner," said Harriet.
"No, it's more than manner. It's the gift of being superior, there now: better than most folks. You understand me, I don't mean swank and money. That'l] never give it you. Neither is it thinking yourself superior. The people that are superior don't think it, and don't even seem to feel it, in a way. And yet in a way they know it. But there aren't many of them out here. And what there are go away. This place is meant for all one dead level sort of people."
He spoke with curious sarcasm.
"But," said Harriet, "you are Australian yourself now, aren't you? Or don't you feel it?"
"Oh yes, I suppose I feel it," he said, shifting uneasily on his seat. "I am Australian. And I'm Australian partly because I know that in Australia there won't be anybody any better than me. There now."
"But," laughed Harriet, "aren't you glad then?"
"Glad?" he said. "It's not a matter for gladness. It's a fact. But I'm not one of the fools who think there's nobody any better than me in the world, I know there are."
