Richard shook his head in silence.
“No,” he said, in a slow, remote voice. “I know your love, Kangaroo. Working everything from the spirit, from the head. You work the lower self as an instrument of the spirit. Now it is time for the spirit to leave us again; it is time for the Son of Man to depart, and leave us dark, in front of the unspoken God: who is just beyond the dark threshold of the lower self, my lower self. There is a great God on the threshold of my lower self, whom I fear while he is my glory. And the spirit goes out like a spent candle.”
Kangaroo watched with a heavy face like a mask.
“It is time for the spirit to leave us,” he murmured in a somnambulist voice. “Time for the spirit to leave us.”
Somers, who had dropped his face, hiding it as he spoke, watched the other man from under his brows. Kangaroo, who still sat impassive, like a frozen, antagonised Buddha, gave himself a jerk of recovery.
“Ah well!” he sighed, with a weary, impatient, condescending sigh. “I was never able to follow mysticism and metaphysics. One of my many limitations. I don’t know what you mean.”
“But what is your ‘love’ but a mystical thing?” asked Richard indignantly.
“My love? Why, that is something I feel, as plain as toothache.”
“Well, so do I feel the other: and love has become like cardboard to me,” said Richard, still indignant.
“Like cardboard? Well, I don’t quite see love like cardboard, dear boy. For you are a dear boy, in spite of yourself. Oh yes, you are. There’s some demon inside you makes you perverse, and won’t let you be the dear, beautiful thing you are. But I’m going to exorcise that demon.”