Page:Kangaroo, 1923.pdf/372

 showing; spirals like fairy stair-cases, and long, pure phallie pieces that were the centres of big shells, from which the whorl was all washed away: also curious flat, oval discs, with a lovely whorl traced on them, and an eye in the centre. Richard liked these especially.

Kangaroo looked at them briefly, one by one, as if they were bits of uninteresting printed paper.

"Here, take them away," he said, pushing the box aside. And his face had a faint spot of pink in the cheeks.

"They may amuse you some time when you are alone," said Richard, apologetically.

"They make me know I have never been born," said Kangaroo, huskily.

Richard was startled, and he didn't know what to answer. So he sat still, and Kangaroo lay still, staring blankly in front of him. Somers could not detach his mind from the slight, yet pervading sickening smell.

"My sewers leak," said Kangaroo, bitterly, as if divining the other's thought.

"But they will get better," said Richard.

The sick man did not answer, and Somers just sat still.

"Have you forgiven me?" asked Kangaroo, looking at Somers.

"There was nothing to forgive," said Richard, his face grave and still.

"I knew you hadn't," said Kangaroo. Richard knitted his brows. He looked at the long, yellow face. It was so strange and so frightening to him.

"You bark at me as if I were Little Red Riding-hood," he said, smiling. Kangaroo turned dark, inscrutable eyes on him.

"Help me!" he said, almost in a whisper. "Help me."

"Yes," said Richard.

Kangaroo held out his hand: and Richard took it. But not without a slight sense of repugnance. Then he listened to the faint, far-off noises of the town, and looked at the beautiful flowers in the room: violets, orchids, tuberoses, delicate yellow and red roses, iceland poppies, orange like transmitted light, lilies. It was like a tomb, like a mortuary, all the flowers, and that other faint, sickening odour.

"I am not wrong, you know," said Kangaroo.