Now, all this time the little bird which the Princess had given to him was singing quite loudly under the folds of the traveler's cloak. And he took it out and showed it to the youths who spoke with him, and said, "This bird was given me by the Princess whom you declare to be a myth. How could a myth give me this living bird?" They answered, "You are surely a madman as well as a dreamer. Doubtless the bird flew into your chamber while you slept, and your dreaming fancy took advantage of the incident to frame this tale about the Princess and her gift. It is often so in dreams. The consciousness perceives things as it were through a cloud, and weaves fictions out of realities." Then he began to doubt, but still he held his ground, and said, "Yet hear how sweetly it sings! No wild, untaught bird of earth could sing like that." Whereat they were vastly merry, and one cried, Why, it is quite a common 'tweet-tweet!' It is no more than the chirp of a vulgar, everyday thrush or linnet!" And another, "Were I you, I would wring the bird's neck; it must be a terrible nuisance if it always makes such a noise!" And a third, "Let it fly, we cannot hear ourselves speaking for its screaming!" Then the traveler began to feel ashamed of his bird. "All that I say," he thought, "appears to them foolish, even the Princess's gift is, in their eyes, a common chirping chaffinch. What if indeed I have been dreaming; what if this, after all, should be the real world, and the other a mere fantasy?" The bird sang, "Away! away! or you will never see the Princess more! The real world lies beyond the gates of the sunset!" But when the traveler asked the youths what the bird sang, they answered that they had only heard "Tweet-tweet," and "Chirp-chirp." Then he was really angry, but not with them, as you would perhaps have thought. No, he was angry with the bird, and ashamed of it and of himself. And he threw it from him into the air, and clapped his hands to drive it away; and all the youths and girls that stood around him clapped theirs too. "Sh-shsh," they cried, "be off, you are a good-for-nothing hedge-finch, and may be thankful your neck has not been wrung to punish you for making such a noise!" So the bird flew away, away beyond the sunset, and I think it went back to the Princess and told her all that had happened. And the traveler went, and danced and sang and feasted to his heart's content with the worshippers of Queen Beauty, not knowing that he really had fallen among the sirens after all! III.