“I don’t know whether I ought to sit down with you,” he began, when Kane begged him to share his table. “I’ve just been through the greatest humiliation I’ve had yet. It’s so thick on me that I’m afraid some of it will come off. And it wasn’t my fault, either; it was my misfortune.” “We can bear to suffer for our misfortunes,” said Kane, dreamily. “To suffer for our faults would be intolerable, because then we couldn’t preserve our self-respect. Don’t you see? But the consciousness that our anguish is undeserved is consoling; it’s even flattering.” “I’m sorry to deprive you of a _Hard Saying_, if that’s one, but my facts are against you.” “Ah, but facts must always yield to reasons,” Kane began. Ray would not be stopped. But he suddenly caught the humorous aspect of his adventure with the editor of _Every Evening_, and gave it with artistic zest. He did not spare his ridiculous hopes or his ridiculous pangs. From time to time Kane said, at some neat touch: “Oh, good!” “Very good!” “Capital!” “Charming, charming!” When Ray stopped, he drew a long breath, and sighed out: “Yes, I know the man. He’s not a bad fellow. He’s a very good fellow.” “A good fellow?” Ray demanded. “Why did he behave like a brute, then? He’s the only man who’s been rude to me in New York. Why couldn’t he have shown me the same courtesy that all the publishers have? Every one of them has behaved decently, though none of them, confound them! wanted my book.” “Ah,” said Kane, “his conditions were different. They had all some little grace of leisure, and according to your report he had none. I don’t know a more pathetic picture than you’ve drawn of him, trying to grasp all those details of his work, and yet seize a new one. It’s frightful. Don’t you feel the pathos of it?” “No man ought to place himself in conditions where he has to deny himself the amenities of life,” Ray persisted, and he felt that he had made a point, and languaged it well. “He’s to blame if he does.”