“Idiots!” growled Rhodes. “Let ’em flood the country with bad work as well as good. It will educate the people, and the day will come when all good work will stand an equal chance—be it French or be it American.” “True,” said Clifford, “Let’s all have a bock. Where’s Rex?” But Gethryn had slipped out in the confusion. Quitting the Café des Écoles, he sauntered across the street, and turning through the Rue de Vaugirard, entered the rue Monsieur le Prince. He crossed the dim courtyard of his hôtel, and taking a key and a candle from the lodge of the Concierge, started to mount the six flights to his bedroom and studio. He felt irritable and fagged, and it did not make matters better when he found, on reaching his own door, that he had taken the wrong key. Nor did it ease his mind to fling the key over the banisters into the silent stone hallway below. He leaned sulkily over the railing and listened to it ring and clink down into the darkness, and then, with a brief but vigorous word, he turned and forced in his door with a crash. Two bull pups which had flown at him with portentous growls and yelps of menace now gamboled idiotically about him, writhing with anticipation of caresses, and a gray and scarlet parrot, rudely awakened, launched forth upon a musical effort resembling the song of a rusty cart-wheel. “Oh, you infernal bird!” murmured the master, lighting his candle with one hand and fondling the pups with the other. “There, there, puppies, run away!” he added, rolling the ecstatic pups into a sort of dog divan, where they curled themselves down at last and subsided with squirms and wriggles, gurgling affection. Gethryn lighted a lamp and then a cigarette. Then, blowing out the candle, he sat down with a sigh. His eyes fell on the parrot. It annoyed him that the parrot should immediately turn over and look at him upside down. It also annoyed him that “Satan,” an evil-looking raven, was evidently preparing to descend from his perch and worry “Mrs Gummidge.” “Mrs Gummidge” was the name Clifford had given to a large sad-eyed white tabby who now lay dozing upon a panther skin. “Satan!” said Gethryn. The bird checked his sinister preparations and eyed his master. “Don’t,” said the young man. Satan weighed his chances and came to the conclusion that he could swoop down, nip Mrs Gummidge, and get back to his bust of Pallas without being caught. He tried it, but his master was too quick for him, and foiled, he lay sullenly in Gethryn’s hands, his two long claws projecting helplessly between the brown fists of his master. “Oh, you fiend!” muttered Rex, taking him toward a wicker basket, which he hated. “Solitary confinement for you, my boy.” “Double, double, toil and trouble,” croaked the parrot. Gethryn started nervously and shut him inside the cage, a regal gilt structure with “Shakespeare” printed over the door. Then, replacing the agitated Gummidge on her panther skin, he sat down once more and lighted another cigarette.