"`Yes,' he said with a huge sigh, `I am free in Russia. You are right.
I could really walk into that town over there and have love all over again,
and perhaps marry some beautiful woman and begin again, and nobody could
ever find me. Yes, you have certainly convinced me of something.'
"His tone was so queer and mystical that I felt impelled to ask
him what he meant, and of what exactly I had convinced him.
"`You have convinced me,' he said with the same dreamy eye,
`why it is really wicked and dangerous for a man to run away
from his wife.'
"`And why is it dangerous?' I inquired.
"`Why, because nobody can find him,' answered this odd person,
`and we all want to be found.'
"`The most original modern thinkers,' I remarked,
`Ibsen, Gorki, Nietzsche, Shaw, would all rather say that what we
want most is to be lost: to find ourselves in untrodden paths,
and to do unprecedented things: to break with the past and belong
to the future.'
"He rose to his whole height somewhat sleepily, and looked round on
what was, I confess, a somewhat desolate scene--the dark purple plains,
the neglected railroad, the few ragged knots of malcontents.
`I shall not find the house here,' he said.
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