Page:Aaron's Rod, Lawrence, New York 1922.djvu/83

 "But I must bother," she said. "I must think and feel—"

"You've no occasion," he said.

"How—?" she said, with a sudden grunting, unhappy laugh. Then she lit a cigarette.

"No," she said. "What I should really like more than anything would be an end of the world. I wish the world would come to an end."

He laughed, and poured his drops of brandy down his throat.

"It won't, for wishing," he said.

"No, that's the awful part of it. It'll just go on and on—Doesn't it make you feel you'd go mad?"

He looked at her and shook his head.

"You see it doesn't concern me," he said. "So long as I can float by myself."

"But are you satisfied!" she cried.

"I like being by myself—I hate feeling and caring, and being forced into it. I want to be left alone—"

"You aren't very polite to your hostess of the evening," she said, laughing a bit miserably.

"Oh, we're all right," he said. "You know what I mean—"

"You like your own company? Do you?—Sometimes I think I'm nothing when I'm alone. Sometimes I think I surely must be nothing—nothingness."

He shook his head.

"No," he said. "No. I only want to left alone."

"Not to have anything to do with anybody?" she queried ironically.

"Not to any extent."

She watched him—and then she bubbled with a laugh.

"I think you're funny," she said. "You don't mind?"

"No—why—It's just as you see it.—Jim Bricknell's a rare comic, to my eye."

"Oh, him!—no, not actually. He's self-conscious and selfish and hysterical. It isn't a bit funny after a while."

"I only know what I've seen," said Aaron. "You'd both of you like a bloody revolution, though."