∞
'What else are you?’
‘You may well ask. It no doubt is invisible. Yet I’m something to myself at least. I can see the point of my own existence, though I can quite understand nobody else’s seeing it.’
‘And will your existence have less point, if you live with me?’
He paused a long time before replying:
‘It might.’
She too stayed to think about it.
‘And what is the point of your existence?’
‘I tell you, it’s invisible. I don’t believe in the world, not in money, nor in advancement, nor in the future of our civilization. If there’s got to be a future for humanity, there’ll have to be a very big change from what now is.’
‘And what will the real future have to be like?’
‘God knows! I can feel something inside me, all mixed up with a lot of rage. But what it really amounts to, I don’t know.’
‘Shall I tell you?’ she said, looking into his face. ‘Shall I tell you what you have that other men don’t have, and that will make the future? Shall I tell you?’
‘Tell me then,’ he replied.
‘It’s the courage of your own tenderness, that’s what it is: like when you put your hand on my tail and say I’ve got a pretty tail.’
