Kangaroo sat bunched up like some creature watching round-eyed out of a darker corner. “How do you mean, enters us from below?” he barked. “Not through the spirit. Enters us from the lower self, the dark self, the phallic self, if you like.” “Enters us from the phallic self?” snapped Kangaroo sharply. “Sacredly. The god you can never see or visualise, who stands dark on the threshold of the phallic me.” “The phallic you, my dear young friend, what is that but love?” Richard shook his head in silence. “No,” he said, in a slow, remote voice. “I know your love, Kangaroo. Working everything from the spirit, from the head. You work the lower self as an instrument of the spirit. Now it is time for the spirit to leave us again; it is time for the Son of Man to depart, and leave us dark, in front of the unspoken God: who is just beyond the dark threshold of the lower self, my lower self. There is a great God on the threshold of my lower self, whom I fear while he is my glory. And the spirit goes out like a spent candle.” Kangaroo watched with a heavy face like a mask. “It is time for the spirit to leave us,” he murmured in a somnambulist voice. “Time for the spirit to leave us.” Somers, who had dropped his face, hiding it as he spoke, watched the other man from under his brows. Kangaroo, who still sat impassive, like a frozen, antagonised Buddha, gave himself a jerk of recovery. “Ah well!” he sighed, with a weary, impatient, condescending sigh. “I was never able to follow mysticism and metaphysics. One of my many limitations. I don’t know what you mean.” “But what is your ‘love’ but a mystical thing?” asked Richard indignantly. “My love? Why, that is something I _feel_, as plain as toothache.” “Well, so do I feel the other: and love has become like cardboard to me,” said Richard, still indignant. “Like cardboard? Well, I don’t quite see love like cardboard, dear boy. For you _are_ a dear boy, in spite of yourself. Oh yes, you are. There’s some demon inside you makes you perverse, and won’t let you be the dear, beautiful thing you are. But I’m going to exorcise that demon.” Somers gave a short laugh, the very voice of the demon speaking. “Oh yes I am,” said Kangaroo, in a steely voice. “I’m going to exorcise that demon, and release your beautiful Andromeda soul.” “Try,” ejaculated Richard dryly, turning aside his face in distaste. Kangaroo leaped to his feet and stood towering over the little enemy as if he would stoop over him and smother him in violent warmth and drive out the demon in that way. But Richard sat cold and withheld, and Kangaroo had not the power to touch him. “I’m going to try,” shouted the lawyer, in his slightly husky roar. “You’ve made it my prerogative by telling me to try. I’m going to love you, and you won’t get away from that. I’m the hound of heaven after you, my boy, and I’m fatal to the hell hound that’s leading you. Do you know I love you?--that I loved you long before I met you?”