I want you!"

He thrust me out.

"An asylum, Mr. Benlian," I thought as I crossed the yard, "is the place
for you!" You see, I didn't know him then, and that he wasn't to be
judged as an ordinary man is. Just you wait till you see....

And straight away, I found myself vowing that I'd have nothing more to do
with him. I found myself resolving that, as if I were making up my mind
not to smoke or drink--and (I don't know why) with a similar sense that I
was depriving myself of something. But, somehow, I forgot, and within a
month he'd been in several times to see me, and once or twice had fetched
me in to see his statue.

In two months I was in an extraordinary state of mind about him. I was
familiar with him in a way, but at the same time I didn't know one scrap
more about him. Because I'm a fool (oh, yes, I know quite well, now, what
I am) you'll think I'm talking folly if I even begin to tell you what
sort of a man he was. I don't mean just his knowledge (though I think he
knew everything--sciences, languages, and all that) for it was far more
than that. Somehow, when he was there, he had me all restless and uneasy;
and when he wasn't there I was (there's only the one word for it)
jealous--as jealous as if he'd been a girl! Even yet I can't make it
out....

And he knew how unsettled he'd got me; and I'll tell you how I found that
out.

Straight out one night, when he was sitting up in my place, he asked me:
"Do you like me, Pudgie?" (I forgot to say that I'd told him they used to
call me Pudgie at home, because I was little and fat; it was odd, the
number of things I told him that I wouldn't have told anybody else.)

"Do you like me, Pudgie?" he said.

As for my answer, I don't know how it spurted out. I was much more
surprised than he was, for I really didn't intend it. It was for all the
world as if somebody else was talking with my mouth.

"_I loathe and adore you!_" it came; and then I looked round, awfully
startled to hear myself saying that.

But he didn't look at me. He only nodded.

"Yes. Of good and evil too--" he muttered to himself. And then all of a
sudden he got up and went out.

I didn't sleep for ever so long after that, thinking how odd it was I
should have said that.

Well (to get on), after that something I couldn't account for began to
come over me sometimes as I worked. It began to come over me, without any
warning, that he was thinking of me down there across the yard. I used to
_k