"Why can't you?" His tone here is not a challenge. Without context it'd sound like an idle question, inconsequential. Only curious. "Your philosophy - which I haven't heard in full, I grant you - accounts for change, doesn't it? That seems the whole purpose of it. Not the change of a man's essential nature but a change in which parts of it he cultivates. Your philosophy isn't a fine piece of glass, lost forever the moment it breaks. It can't be, or it never would have gained such a following in your own world. I'd be very surprised if more than a couple of its followers never broke that vow after taking it, especially given what you've told me of the lives many of those followers led. Can you think what might've been if they'd had as little regard for that philosophy as you do? But I doubt you think of it in that way. Perhaps you've forgotten just how violent change can be, even when its goal is peace. Maybe especially then."

"Signless, a gardner does not cultivate his garden, walk away from it, then declare it ruined beyond repair the moment he sees a weed. He does not love his work because he expects it to be finished. It seems to me you've forgotten that, see your vow only as a set of rules which must always be followed. I might call that disrespectful, I might call it arrogant - but what do I know? Any others who've failed that vow but repaired it, lived that philosophy and died in it, what do they know either? Certainly not so much as the one who taught it to them. Perhaps all of us've got the nature of your philosophy all wrong. I'm sure you know it best."

Roland arm, as he speaks, loosens a little from around Signless' shoulders. It's still there, but he's ready to let go should he need to. One doesn't say the things he just did without being prepared for some sort of reaction.