“No! You silly savage!” said Josephine. “No, you wild beast. Can’t you understand that one doesn’t treat people like that? It is simply wasting my breath to talk. I’ve explained a hundred times I am not going to make father miserable. I am not going to be cut off with a shilling and become _dependent_ on you when you haven’t enough money to live on yourself, to satisfy your vanity. My _vanity_, do you think having you in love with me pleases my _vanity_? I might as well have a baboon or a bear. You are Tarzan of the Apes; you ought to be shut up in the Zoo. The collection here is incomplete without you. You are a survival--atavism at its worst. Don’t ask me why I fell in love with you--I did, but I cannot marry Tarzan of the Apes, I’m not romantic enough. I see, too, that you do believe what you have been saying. You do think mankind is your enemy. I can assure you that if mankind thinks of you, it thinks you are the missing link. You ought to be shut up and exhibited here in the Zoo--I’ve told you once and now I tell you again--with the gorilla on one side and the chimpanzee on the other. Science would gain a lot.” “Well, I will be. I am sure you are quite right. I’ll make arrangements to be exhibited,” said Cromartie. “I’m very grateful to you for having told me the truth about myself.” Then he took off his hat and said “Good-bye,” and giving a quick little nod he walked away. “Miserable baboon,” muttered Josephine, and she hurried out through the swing doors. They were both of them in a rage, but John Cromartie was in such a desperate rage that he did not know he was angry, he only thought that he was very miserable and unhappy. Josephine, on the other hand, was elated. She would have enjoyed slashing at Cromartie with a whip. That evening Cromartie could not keep still. When the chairs presumed to stand in his path he knocked them over, but he soon found that merely upsetting furniture was not enough to restore his peace of mind. It was then that Mr. Cromartie made a singular determination--one which you may swear no other man in like circumstances would ever have arrived at. It was somehow or other to get himself exhibited in the Zoo, as if he were part of the menagerie. It may be that a strange predilection which he had for keeping his word is enough to account for this. But it will always be found that many impulses are entirely whimsical and not to be accounted for by reason. And this man was both proud and obstinate, so that when he had decided upon a thing in passion he would brave it out so far that he could no longer withdraw from it. At the time he said to himself that he would do it to humiliate Josephine. If she loved him it would make her suffer, and if she did not love him it would not matter to him where he was. “And perhaps she is right,” he said to himself with a smile. “Perhaps I am the missing link, and the Zoo is the best place for me.”