“I know whom I love, and whom I do not,” said Josephine. “And if you should drive me to choose between you and everybody else, I should be a fool to give myself to you.”

Dingo ♂

Canis familiaris var.

NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA

“Poor little Dingo,” said Cromartie. “They do shut up creatures here on the thinnest pretexts. He is only the familiar dog.”

The Dingo whined, and wagged his tail. He knew that he was being spoken of.

Josephine turned from her lover to the Dingo, and her face softened as she looked at it.

“I suppose they have got to have everything here, every single kind of beast there is, even if it turns out to be nothing but an ordinary dog.”

They left the Dingo, walked to the next cage, and stood side by side looking at the creature in it.

“The slender dog,” said Josephine, reading the label. She laughed, and the slender dog got up and walked away.

“So that is a wolf,” said Cromartie, as they stopped six feet further on. “Another dog in a cage… Give yourself to me, Josephine, that sounds to me as if you were crazy. But it shows anyway that you are not in love with me. If you are in love it is all or nothing. You cannot be in love with several people at once. I know because I am in love with you, and other people are all my enemies, necessarily my enemies.”

“What nonsense!” said Josephine.

“If I am in love with you,” Cromartie went on, “and you with me, it means that you are the only person who is not my enemy, and I am the only person who is not yours. A fool to give yourself to me! Yes, you are a fool if you fancy you are in love when you are not, and I should be a fool to believe it. You do not give yourself to the person with whom you are in love, you are yourself instead of being dressed up in armoured plate.”

“Has this place got nothing in it besides tame dogs?” asked Josephine.

They walked together towards the lion house, and Josephine took John’s arm in hers. “Armoured plate. It doesn’t seem to me to make sense. I cannot bear to hurt the people I love, and so I am not going to live with you, or do anything that they would mind if they found out.”

John said nothing to this, only shrugged his shoulders, screwed up his eyes, and rubbed his nose. In the lion house they walked slowly from cage to cage until they came to a tiger which walked up and down, up and down, up and down, turning his great painted head with intolerable familiarity, and with his whiskers just brushing the brick wall.

“They pay for their beauty, poor beasts,” said John, after a pause. “And you know it proves what I’ve been saying. Mankind want to catch anything beautiful and shut it up, and then come in thousands to watch it die by inches. That’s why one hides what one is and lives behind a mask in secret.”