“Thank you, Tarr. That’s better than having a slave, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I think everything is in order.”
“Then you’re my efficient chimpanzee?”
“No, I’m the new animal; we haven’t found a name for it yet. It will succeed the Superman. Back to the Earth!”
“Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Kiss me!”
CHAPTER IV
Tarr crawled towards Bertha that day on the back of a Place St. Michel bus. He did not like his job.
The secret of his visits to Bertha and interminable liaison was that he really never had meant to leave her at all, he reflected. He had not meant to leave her altogether. He was just playing. Or rather, a long debt of disgraceful behaviour was accumulating, that he knew would have to be met. It was deliberately increased by him, because he knew he would not repudiate it. But it would have been absurd not to try to escape.
To-day he must break the fact to Bertha that he could no longer regard himself as responsible. He was faced with the necessity, for the first time, of seriously bargaining. The debt was not to be repudiated, but he must tell her that he only had himself to pay with, and that he had been seized by somebody else.