Then Kangaroo looked with a teasing little smile at Somers.
“But you have your own idea of power, haven’t you?” he said, getting up suddenly, with quick power in his bulk, and gripping the other man’s shoulder.
“I thought I had,” said Somers.
“Oh, you have, you have.” There was a calm, easy tone in the voice, slightly fat, very agreeable. Somers thrilled to it as he had never thrilled.
“Why, the man is like a god, I love him,” he said to his astonished self. And Kangaroo was hanging forward his face and smiling heavily and ambiguously to himself, knowing that Somers was with him.
“‘Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night’”
he quoted in a queer, sonorous voice, like a priest. “The lion of your might would be a tiger, wouldn’t it. The tiger and the unicorn were fighting for the crown. How about me for a unicorn?—if I tied a bayonet on my nose?” He rubbed his nose with a heavy playfulness.
“Is the tiger your principle of evil?”
“The tiger? Oh dear, no. The jackal, the hyæna, and dear, deadly humanity. No, no. The tiger stands on one side the shield, and the unicorn on the other, and they don’t fight for the crown at all. They keep it up between them. The pillars of the world! The tiger and the kangaroo!” he boomed this out in a mock heroic voice, strutting with heavy playfulness. Then he laughed, looking winsomely at Somers. Heaven, what a beauty he had!
“Tiger, tiger, burning bright,” he resumed, sing-song, abstracted. “I knew you’d come. Even since I read your first book of poems—how many years is it ago?—ten?—eleven? I knew you’d come.