“Hullo,” I said.
“Good morning, Sinclair. I only wanted to hear how you’re getting on. Kromer leaves you in peace, doesn’t he?”
“Did you manage that? But how did you do it? How? I don’t understand it. He hasn’t come near me.”
“Splendid. If he should come again—I don’t think he will, but he’s a cheeky fellow—then simply tell him to remember Demian.”
“But what does it all mean? Have you had a fight with him and thrashed him?”
“No, I’m not so keen on that. I simply talked to him, as I did to you, and I made it clear to him that it is to his own advantage to leave you in peace.”
“Oh, but you haven’t given him any money?”
“No, kid. You have already tried that way yourself.”
I attempted to pump him on the matter, but he disengaged himself. The old, embarrassed feeling concerning him came over me—an odd mixture of gratitude and shyness, of admiration and fear, of affection and inward resistance.
I had the intention of seeing him again soon, and then I wanted to talk more about everything, about the Cain affair as well. But I did not see him. Gratitude is not one of the virtues in which I believe, and to require it of a child would seem to me wrong. So I do not wonder very much at the complete ingratitude which I evinced towards Max Demian. To-day I believe positively that I should have been ruined for life if he had not freed me from Kromer’s clutches. At that time also I already felt this release as the greatest event of my young life—but I left the deliverer on one side as soon as he had accomplished the miracle.