Before it seemed possible it was time to go back to the Gardens, if she were to see Cromartie before closing time. She walked quickly into the house, and found Cromartie sitting near the front of his cage as if he were expecting to see her. As she came up to the cage he put down the pipe he had been holding in his mouth and stood up, seeming then to overshadow her, the floor of his cage being higher than the corridor in which she stood.
“Please sit down,” she said, and then was silent, finding nothing of all the things she had come to tell him ready to her tongue.
He obeyed her.
They looked then at each other for some little while in silence. At last Josephine summoned up her resolution and said to him, speaking in a low voice:
“I think that you are mad.”
Cromartie nodded his head; he had huddled himself up in his chair and apparently was unable to speak.
Josephine waited and said: “I was very worried about you, because I thought at first that something I had said to you might have made you behave in this idiotic way, but it is now quite clear to me that even if what I said did have any influence, you are quite mad, and that I need not think about you any more.”
Cromartie nodded his head again. She noticed with some surprise that he was weeping, and that his face was wet with tears which were falling on to the floor of his cage. The sight of his tears and his determined silence made her harden her heart. She felt suddenly angry.
The bell began ringing for closing time, and she heard someone, probably the policeman, with his hand on the door talking to another man outside. Josephine turned away, but a moment afterwards came back to the cage. Cromartie was walking away from her blowing his nose.
“You must be mad,” she called after him; then the door opened and the policeman came in.