But his interest in the animals was unlike my own, and I should suppose unlike the interest of any other man. He had no knowledge whatever of zoology, and appeared to wish for none. His pleasure consisted in watching the curious expressions and movements of the animals and in dramatising them.
On leaving the Zoo, I said, 'The cross you were just now looking at is as remarkable for its history as for its beauty. It was stolen from the tomb of a near relative of mine. I was under a solemn promise to the person upon whose breast it lay to see that it should never be disturbed. But, now that it has been disturbed, to replace it in the tomb would, I fear, be to insure another sacrilege. I wonder what you would do in such a case?'
He looked at me and said, 'As it is evident that we are going to be intimate friends, I may as well confess to you at once that I am a mystic.'
'When did you become so?'
'When? Ask any man who has passionately loved a woman and lost her; ask him at what moment mysticism was forced upon him—at what moment he felt that he must either accept a spiritualistic theory of the universe or go mad; ask him this, and he will tell you that it was at that moment when he first looked upon her as she lay dead, with Corruption's foul fingers waiting to soil and stain. What are you going to do with the cross?'
'Lock it up as safely as I can,' I said; 'what else is there to do with it?'
He looked into my face and said, 'You are a rationalist.'
'I am.'
'You do not believe in a supernatural world?'
'My disbelief of it,' I said, 'is something more than an exercise of the reason. It is a passion, an angry passion. But what should you do with the cross if you were in my place?'