Page:Kangaroo, 1923.pdf/133

 They were silent, and Kangaroo sat there with the rapt look on his face: a pondering, eternal look, like the eternity of the lamb of God grown into a sheep. This rather wicked idea came into Somers' mind: the lamb of God grown into a sheep. So the man sat there, with his wide-eyed, rapt face sunk forward to his breast, very beautiful, and as eternal as if it were a dream: so absolute.

A wonderful thing for a sculptor. For Kangaroo was really ugly: his pendulous Jewish face, his forward shoulders, his round stomach in its expensively tailored waistcoat and dark grey, striped trousers, his very big thighs. And yet even his body had become beautiful, to Somers—one might love it intensely, every one of its contours, its roundnesses and downward-drooping heaviness. Almost a grotesque, like a Chinese Buddha. And yet not a grotesque. Beautiful, beautiful as some half-tropical, bulging flower from a tree.

Then Kangaroo looked with a teasing little smile at Somers.

"But you have your own idea of power, haven't you?" he said, getting up suddenly, with quick power in his bulk, and gripping the other man's shoulder.

"I thought I had," said Somers.

"Oh, you have, you have." There was a calm, easy tone in the voice, slightly fat, very agreeable. Somers thrilled to it as he had never thrilled.

"Why, the man is like a god, I love him," he said to his astonished self. And Kangaroo was hanging forward his face and smiling heavily and ambiguously to himself, knowing that Somers was with him.

he quoted in a queer, sonorous voice, like a priest. "The lion of your might would be a tiger, wouldn't it. The tiger and the unicorn were fighting for the crown. How about me for a unicorn?—if I tied a bayonet on my nose? ? He rubbed his nose with a heavy playfulness.

"Is the tiger your principle of evil?"

"The tiger? Oh dear, no. The jackal, the hyna, and dear, deadly humanity. No, no. The tiger stands on one side the shield, and the unicorn on the other, and they