“Gogo,” I said quite softly.
He threw down his pestle at once, and faced round, writhing his hands together, and glaring at me.
“Who spoke?” he said, in hoarse, trembling tones. “A voice from the garden making me in love with my own clown name. O, always so, always so, thou spirit of Eve; and, though it lost the world to God, I’d take the apple from thy hand.”
I laughed a little tremulously, as he stumped across the floor and stood close before me. The vision of this great storm of a creature, condemned to play the “comic relief” in the tragedy of his own manhood, came as near my heart as anything.
“Look!” he cried, his rugged chest heaving; “I can’t kneel to you, and I’m your slave. I walk open-eyed, hating and adoring you, into the toils you spread for our feet. Feet!” he groaned, looking down, with a despairing gesture. “Perhaps—who knows?—having them, I might have escaped.”
“How did you lose them, poor Gogo?” I said.
“Hating and adoring,” he groaned, unheeding my question, “hating and adoring. Look, little serpent: I could crush your slender throat for what you do, and hold on, and sob my soul away to see you die. Why have you come between us? United, we were strong, he and I. I drove his genius on, and loved the poor ape for its spark of divinity, and propped the weak spirit while it wrought. You knock the prop away, you knock the prop away, and we both fall; and where is my compensation for the injury?” He clasped his great hands to me: “Give me back my genius,” he cried in pain, “and let us go.”
I rose to my feet, half moved and half resentful.
“It is not I who take him or want him. I will not come here again.”
As I turned, he barred my way.