"A want of dignity."

"He doesn't recognise his obligations?"

"On the contrary, he recognises them with effusion, especially in
public: he smiles and bows and beckons across the street to them.
But when they pass over he turns away, and he speedily loses them
in the crowd. The recognition's purely spiritual--it isn't in the
least social. So he leaves all his belongings to other people to
take care of. He accepts favours, loans, sacrifices--all with
nothing more deterrent than an agony of shame. Fortunately we're a
little faithful band, and we do what we can." I held my tongue
about the natural children, engendered, to the number of three, in
the wantonness of his youth. I only remarked that he did make
efforts--often tremendous ones. "But the efforts," I said, "never
come to much: the only things that come to much are the
abandonments, the surrenders."

"And how much do they come to?"

"You're right to put it as if we had a big bill to pay, but, as
I've told you before, your questions are rather terrible. They
come, these mere exercises of genius, to a great sum total of
poetry, of philosophy, a mighty mass of speculation, notation,
quotation. The genius is there, you see, to meet the surrender;
but there's no genius to support the defence."

"But what is there, after all, at his age, to show?"