“You’re morbid to-day, Linda,” said Nance abruptly. “Well? Shall we go to the garden? I feel as though carrying watering-pots and doing weeding will be good for both of us.”
While this conversation was going on between the sisters in their High Street lodging, Sorio and Baltazar were seated together on a bench by the harbour’s side. The tide was flowing in and cool sea-breaths, mixed with the odour of tar and paint and fisherman’s tobacco, floated in upon them as they talked.
“It’s absurd to have any secrets between you and me,” Sorio was saying, his face reflecting the light of the sunset as it poured down the river’s surface to where they sat. “When I become quite impossible to you as a companion, I suppose you’ll tell me so and turn me out. But until then I’m going to assume that I interest you and don’t bore you.”
“It isn’t a question of boring any one,” replied the other. “You annoyed me just now because I thought you were making no effort to control yourself. You seemed trying to rake up every repulsive sensation you’ve ever had and thrust it down my throat. Bored? Certainly I wasn’t bored! On the contrary, I was much more what you might call bitten. You go so far, my dear, you go so far!”
“I don’t call that going far at all,” said Sorio sulkily. “What’s the use of living together if we can’t talk of everything? Besides, you didn’t let me finish. What I wanted to say was that for some reason or other, I’ve lately got to a point when every one I meet—every mortal person, and especially every stranger—strikes me as odious and disgusting. I’ve had the feeling before but never quite like this. It’s not a pleasant feeling, my dear, I can assure you of that!”
“But what do you mean—what do you mean by odious and disgusting?” threw in the other. “I suppose they’re made in the same way we are. Flesh and blood is flesh and blood, after all.”
As Baltazar said this, what he thought in his mind was much as follows: “Adriano is evidently going mad again. This kind of thing is one of the symptoms. I like having him here with me. I like looking at his face when he’s excited. He has a beautiful face—it’s more purely antique in its moulding than half the ancient cameos. I especially like looking at him when he’s harassed and outraged. He has a dilapidated wistfulness at those times which exactly suits my taste. I should miss Adriano frightfully if he went away. No one I’ve ever lived with suits me better. I can annoy him when I like and I can appease him when I like. He fills me with a delicious sense of power. If only Philippa would leave him alone, and that Herrick girl would stop persecuting him, he’d suit me perfectly. I like him when his nerves are quivering and twitching. I like the ‘wounded-animal look’ he has then. But it’s these accursed girls who spoil it all. Of course it’s their work, this new mania. They carry everything so far! I like him to get wild and desperate but I don’t want him mad. These girls stick at nothing. They’d drive him into an asylum if they could, poor helpless devil!”
While these thoughts slid gently through Stork’s head, his friend was already answering his question about “flesh and blood.” “It’s just that which gets on my nerves,” he said. “I can stand it when I’m talking to you because I forget everything except your mind, and I can stand it when I’m making love to a girl, because I forget everything but—”
“Don’t say her body!” threw in Baltazar.
“I wasn’t going to,” snarled the other. “I know it isn’t their bodies one thinks of. It’s—it’s—what the devil is it? It’s something much deeper than that. Well, never mind! What I want to say is this. With you and Raughty, and a few others who really interest me, I forget the whole thing. You are individuals to me. I’m interested in you, and I forget what you’re like, or that you have flesh at all.