`It is still eastward--
further and further eastward.'
"Then he turned upon me with something like fury, and struck the foot
of his pole upon the frozen earth.
"`And if I do go back to my country,' he cried, `I may be locked up in a
madhouse before I reach my own house. I have been a bit unconventional
in my time! Why, Nietzsche stood in a row of ramrods in the silly old
Prussian army, and Shaw takes temperance beverages in the suburbs;
but the things I do are unprecedented things. This round road I
am treading is an untrodden path. I do believe in breaking out;
I am a revolutionist. But don't you see that all these real leaps
and destructions and escapes are only attempts to get back to Eden--
to something we have had, to something we at least have heard of?
Don't you see one only breaks the fence or shoots the moon in order
to get HOME?'
"`No,' I answered after due reflection, `I don't think I should accept that.'
"`Ah,' he said with a sort of a sigh, `then you have explained a second
thing to me.'
"`What do you mean?' I asked; `what thing?'
"`Why your revolution has failed,' he said; and walking across quite
suddenly to the train he got into it just as it was steaming away at last.
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