Straight out one night, when he was sitting up in my place, he asked me: "Do you like me, Pudgie?" (I forgot to say that I'd told him they used to call me Pudgie at home, because I was little and fat; it was odd, the number of things I told him that I wouldn't have told anybody else.)
"Do you like me, Pudgie?" he said.
As for my answer, I don't know how it spurted out. I was much more surprised than he was, for I really didn't intend it. It was for all the world as if somebody else was talking with my mouth.
"I loathe and adore you!" it came; and then I looked round, awfully startled to hear myself saying that.
But he didn't look at me. He only nodded.
"Yes. Of good and evil too—" he muttered to himself. And then all of a sudden he got up and went out.
I didn't sleep for ever so long after that, thinking how odd it was I should have said that.
Well (to get on), after that something I couldn't account for began to come over me sometimes as I worked. It began to come over me, without any warning, that he was thinking of me down there across the yard. I used to know (this must sound awfully silly to you) that he was down yonder, thinking of me and doing something to me. And one night I was so sure that it wasn't fancy that I jumped straight up from my work, and I'm not quite sure what happened then, until I found myself in his studio, just as if I'd walked there in my sleep.
And he seemed to be waiting for me, for there was a chair by his own, in front of the statue.
"What is it, Benlian?" I burst out.