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 they always interest me. What do you imagine is at the bottom of Jaz?"

"Treachery."

"Oh, not only," laughed Somers.

"Then why do you ask me, if you know better?"

"Because I don't really get to the bottom of him."

"There is no bottom to get to—he's the instinctive traitor, as they all are."

"Oh, surely not only that."

"I see nothing else. They would like the white civilisation to be trampled underfoot piecemeal. And at the same time they live on us like parasites." Kangaroo glowered fiercely.

"There's something more," replied Richard. "They don't believe in our gods, in our ideals. They remember older gods, older ideals, different gods: before the Jews invented a mental Jehovah, and a spiritual Christ. They are nearer the magic of the animal world."

"Magic of the animal world!" roared Kangaroo. "What does that nonsense mean? Are you traitor to your own human intelligence?"

"All too human," smiled Richard.

Kangaroo sat up very straight, and looked at Somers. Somers still smiled faintly and luminously.

"Why are you so easily influenced?" said Kangaroo, with a certain cold reproof. "You are like a child. I know that is part of the charm of your nature, that you are naive like a child, but sometimes you are childish rather than childlike. A perverse child."

"Let me be a perverse child then," laughed Somers, with a flash of attractive laughter at Kangaroo. It frightened the big man, this perverse mood. If only he could have got the wicked light out of Lovat's face, and brought back the fire of earnestness. And yet, as an individual, he was attracted to the little fellow now, like a moth to a candle: a great lumbering moth to a small, but dangerous flame of a candle.

"I'm sure it's Struthers' turn to set the world right, before it's yours," Somers said.

"Why are you sure?"

"I don't know, I thought so when I saw him. You're too human."