“Oh, no man willingly places himself in hateful or injurious conditions,” said Kane. “He is pushed into them, or they grow up about him through the social action. He’s what they shape him to, and when he’s taken his shape from circumstances, he knows instinctively that he won’t fit into others. So he stays put. You would say that the editor of _Every Evening_ ought to forsake his conditions at any cost, and go somewhere else and be a civilized man; but he couldn’t do that without breaking himself in pieces and putting himself together again. Why did I never go back to my own past? I look over my life in New York, and it is chiefly tiresome and futile in the retrospect; I couldn’t really say why I’ve staid here. I don’t expect anything of it, and yet I can’t leave it. The _Every Evening_ man does expect a great deal of his conditions; he expects success, and I understand he’s getting it. But he didn’t place himself in his conditions in any dramatic way, and he couldn’t dramatically break with them. They may be gradually detached from him and then he may slowly change. Of course there are signal cases of renunciation. People have abdicated thrones and turned monks; but they’ve not been common, and I dare say, if the whole truth could be known, they have never been half the men they were before, or become just the saints they intended to be. If you’ll take the most extraordinary instance of modern times, or of all times--if you’ll take Tolstoï himself, you’ll see how impossible it is for a man to rid himself of his environment. Tolstoï believes unquestionably in a life of poverty and toil and trust; but he has not been able to give up his money; he is defended against want by the usual gentlemanly sources of income; and he lives a ghastly travesty of his unfulfilled design. He’s a monumental warning of the futility of any individual attempt to escape from conditions. That’s what I tell my dear old friend Chapley, who’s quite Tolstoï mad, and wants to go into the country and simplify himself.” “Does he, really?” Ray asked, with a smile. “Why not? Tolstoï convinces your reason and touches your heart. There’s no flaw in his logic and no falsity in his sentiment. I think that if Tolstoï had not become a leader, he would have had a multitude of followers.” The perfection of his paradox afforded Kane the highest pleasure. He laughed out his joy in it, and clapped Ray on the shoulder, and provoked him to praise it, and was so frankly glad of having made it that all Ray’s love of him came back. XXVI.