Perhaps it was this meeting which made Somers want to see Kangaroo once more. Everything had suddenly become unreal to him. He went to Sydney and to Cooley’s rooms. But during the first half hour, the revulsion from the First persisted. Somers disliked his appearance, and the kangaroo look made him feel devilish. And then the queer, slow manner of approach. Kangaroo was not really ready for his visitor, and he seemed dense, heavy, absent, clownish. It was that kangarooish clownishness that made a vicious kind of hate spring into Somers’ face. He talked in a hard, cutting voice. “Whom can you depend on, in this world,” he was saying. “Look at these Australians--they’re awfully nice, but they’ve got no inside to them. They’re hollow. How are you going to built on such hollow stalks. They may well call them corn-stalks. They’re marvellous and manly and independent and all that, outside. But inside, they are not. When they’re _quite_ alone, they don’t exist.” “Yet many of them have been alone a long time, in the bush,” said Kangaroo, watching his visitor with slow, dumb, unchanging eyes. “Alone, what sort of alone. Physically alone. And they’ve just gone hollow. They’re never alone in spirit: quite, quite alone in spirit. And the people who have are the only people you can depend on.” “Where shall I find them?” “Not here. It seems to me, least of all here. The Colonies make for _outwardness_. Everything is outward--like hollow stalks of corn. The life makes this inevitable: all that struggle with bush and water and what-not, all the mad struggle with the material necessities and conveniences--the inside soul just withers and goes into the outside, and they’re all just lusty robust hollow stalks of people.” “The corn-stalks bear the corn. I find them generous to recklessness--the greatest quality. The old world is cautious and forever bargaining about its soul. Here they don’t bother to bargain.” “They’ve no soul to bargain about. But they’re even more full of conceit. What do you expect to do with such people. Build a straw castle?” “You see I believe in them--perhaps I know them a little better than you do.” “Perhaps you do. It’ll be cornstalk castle, for all that. What _do_ you expect to build on?” “They’re generous--generous to recklessness,” shouted Kangaroo. “And I love them. I love them. Don’t you come here carping to me about them. They are my children, I love them. If I’m not to believe in their generosity, am I to believe in your cautious, old-world carping, do you think. I _won’t_!” he shouted fiercely. “I _won’t_. Do you hear that!” And he sat hulked in his chair glowering like some queer dark god at bay. Somers paused, and his heart failed.