Richard became very pale, and was silent for some moments. The hand sank heavier, nearer, on his shoulder.
“You see,” said Somers, trying hard to be fair, “what you call my demon is what I identify myself with. It’s my best me, and I stick to it. I think love, all this love of ours, is a devilish thing now: a slow poison. Really, I know the dark god at the lower threshold—even if I have to repeat it like a phrase. And in the sacred dark men meet and touch, and it is a great communion. But it isn’t this love. There’s no love in it. But something deeper. Love seems to me somehow trivial: and the spirit seems like something that belongs to paper. I can’t help it—I know another God.”
The pressure of the hand became inert.
“But aren’t you merely inventing other terms for the same thing that I mean, and that I call love?” said Kangaroo, in a strange, toneless voice, looking aside.
“Does it seem to you that I am?” asked Lovat, gently and dispassionately.
The strange, great passionate cloud of Kangaroo still hung there, hovering over the pale, sharp isolation of Somers, who lay looking up. And then it seemed as if the glow and vibration left Kangaroo’s body, the cloud became grey and heavy. He sighed, removed his hand, and turned away.
“Ah well!” he said. “Ah well!”
Somers rose, trembling now, and feeling frail.
“I’ll go,” he said.
“Yes, do go,” said Kangaroo.