He was still very weak from his illness, and the close atmosphere of the Ape-house gave him a headache. Every moment he had now to exercise self-control, and it was more and more exhausting for him to do so. Very often he did what he did on this occasion, and this was to lie down to rest in his back room and then burst into tears, quite without any restraint, and though he laughed at himself afterwards, the act of weeping comforted him, although it left him weaker than before and more inclined to weep again.

But the pricks and troubles of the outside world meant very little to Mr. Cromartie just then. He could not help thinking the whole time of Josephine.

For so long he had believed that there were so many insuperable obstacles which would prevent them ever being happy together, that the additional fact of his being shut up in the Zoo was a relief to him. But now that he felt so weak it was an extra strain, and especially now as he was beginning to wonder if Josephine and he could not be happy together for a little while.

He still knew that they were too proud to endure each other for very long, but could they not have a week or a month or even a year of happiness together?

Perhaps they might, but anyhow it wasn’t possible, and here he was locked up in a cage, with a nigger waiting outside to talk some disgusting trash at him and wear out his patience.

But as a matter of fact, when Cromartie pulled himself together once more and went out into his cage Joe Tennison did not address him—that is, not directly. But he was as tiresome as he had been before, but now it was in a different way.

When Cromartie had settled down and had been reading for a little while, there were no visitors for two or three minutes, and then he heard the negro speaking to himself as he gazed in his direction.

“Poor fellow! Poor young fellow! The women do make hay with a man, they do. I’ve been through it all… I know all about it… Oh, gracious, yes. Love! Love is the very devil. And that poor young man is certainly in love. Nobody can cheer him up. Nobody can do anything except her that caused the trouble in his heart. There’s nothing I can do for him now except just to pretend to notice nothing, the same as I always do.” At this point the speaker was distracted by the arrival of a party of visitors who stopped outside his cage, but thereafter Mr. Cromartie adopted the same method to the negro that he had always adopted to the public. That is to say, he ignored his existence and contrived never to meet his eyes, and never took the least notice of what he said.

The next morning, while Cromartie was playing with his Caracal, with a ball, as he had been accustomed to do before the Orang had taken advantage of him, he heard Josephine’s voice calling to him.