me to try. I'm going to love you, and you won't get away from that. I'm the hound of heaven after you, my boy, and I'm fatal to the hell hound that's leading you. Do you know I love you?—that I loved you long before I met you?"
Richard, curled narrow in his chair like a snake, glanced up at the big man projecting over him. A sort of magnetic effusion seemed to come out of Kangaroo's body, and Richard's hand was almost drawn in spite of himself to touch the other man's body. He had deliberately to refrain from laying his hand on the near, generous stomach of the Kangaroo, because automatically his hand would have lifted and sought that rest. But he prevented himself, and the eyes of the two men met. Kangaroo searched Lovat's eyes: but they seemed to be of cloudy blue like hell-smoke, impenetrable and devilish. Kangaroo watched a long time: but the other man was the unchangeable. Kangaroo turned aside suddenly.
"Ah well," he said. "I can see there is a beast in the way. There is a beast in your eyes, Lovat, and if I can't conquer him then—then woe-betide you, my dear. But I love you, you see."
"Sounds like a threat," laughed Somers.
Kangaroo leaned and laid his hand gently on Lovat's shoulder.
"Don't say that"; his voice was small now, and very gentle. "I loved you before I knew you. My soul cries for you. And you hurt me with the demon that is in you."
Richard became very pale, and was silent for some moments. The hand sank heavier, nearer, on his shoulder.
"You see," said Somers, trying hard to be fair, "what you call my demon is what I identify myself with. It's my best me, and I stick to it. I think love, all this love of ours, is a devilish thing now: a slow poison. Really, I know the dark god at the lower threshold—even if I have to repeat it like a phrase. And in the sacred dark men meet and touch, and it is a great communion. But it isn't this love. There's no love in it. But something deeper. Love seems to me somehow trivial: and the spirit seems like something that belongs to paper. I can't help it—I know another God."
