“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, behind glass pince-nez. Richard had a moment of pure hate for him, in the silence. For Kangaroo refused to answer. “What’s the good, men trying to be gods?” said Richard. “You’re a Jew, and you must be Jehovah or nothing. We’re Christians, all little Christs walking without our crucifixes. Jaz is quite right to play us one against the other. Struthers is the anti-christ, preaching love alone. I’m tired, tired. I want to be a man, with the gods beyond me, greater than me. I want the great gods, and my own mere manliness.” “It’s that treacherous Trewhella,” Kangaroo murmured to himself. Then he seemed to be thinking hard. And then at last he lifted his head and looked at Somers. And now Somers openly hated him. His face was arrogant, insolent, righteous. “I am sorry I have made a mistake in you,” he said. “But we had better settle the matter finally here. I think the best thing you can do is to leave Australia. I don’t think you can do me any serious damage with your talk. I would ask you--before I warn you--not to try. That is all. I should prefer now to be alone.” He had become again hideous, with a long yellowish face and black eyes close together, and a cold, mindless, dangerous hulk to his shoulders. For a moment Somers was afraid of him, as of some great ugly idol that might strike. He felt the intense hatred of the man coming at him in cold waves. He stood up in a kind of horror, in front of the great, close-eyed, horrible thing that was now Kangaroo. Yes, a thing, not a whole man. A great Thing, a horror.