Page:Kangaroo, 1923.pdf/245

 "It's not a case, Kangaroo," said Richard, "it's a sort of instinct."

"Against what?"

"Why, against your ponderousness. And against your insistence. And against the whole sticky stream of love, and the hateful will-to-love. It's the will-to-love that I hate, Kangaroo."

"In me?"

"In us all. I just hate it. It's a sort of syrup we have to stew in, and it's loathsome. Don't love me. Don't want to save mankind. You're so awfully general, and your love is so awfully general: as if one were only a cherry in the syrup. Don't love me. Don't want me to love you. Let's be hard, separate men. Let's understand one another deeper than love."

"Two human ants, in short," said Kangaroo, and his face was yellow.

"No, no. Two men. Let us go to the understanding that is deeper than love."

"Is any understanding deeper than love?" asked Kangaroo with a sneer.

"Why, yes, you know it is. At least between men."

"I'm afraid I don't know it. I know the understanding that is much less than love. If you want me to have a merely commonplace acquaintance with you, I refuse. That's all."

"We are neither of us capable of a quite commonplace acquaintance."

"Oh yes, I am," barked Kangaroo.

"I'm not. But you're such a Kangaroo, wanting to carry mankind in your belly-pouch, cosy, with its head and long ears peeping out. You sort of figure yourself a Kangaroo of Judah, instead of Lion of Judah: Jehovah with a great heavy tail and a belly-pouch. Let's get off it, and be men, with the gods beyond us. I don't want to be godlike, Kangaroo. I like to know the gods beyond me. Let's start as men, with the great gods beyond us."

He looked up with a beautiful candour in his face, and a diabolic bit of mockery in his soul. For Kangaroo's face had gone like an angry wax mask, with mortification. An angry wax mask of mortification, haughty with a stiff, wooden haughtiness, and two little near-set holes for eyes,