He did not know that he was the toy of forces which, working on him through the strangeness of passionate womanhood, could have made him a great cad or a petty hero as easily as they did make him confusedly sorry for himself. That he wasn’t very much of a cad or anything of a hero is a detail, an accident resulting from his thirty-five or thirty-six years of stodgy environment. Cad or hero, filling scandal columns or histories, he would have been the same William Wrenn. He was thinking of Istra as he lay on his bed. In a few minutes he dashed to his bureau and brushed his thinning hair so nervously that he had to try three times for a straight parting. While brushing his eyebrows and mustache he solemnly contemplated himself in the mirror. “I look like a damn rabbit,” he scorned, and marched half-way to Istra’s room. He went back to change his tie to a navy-blue bow which made him appear younger. He was feeling rather resentful at everything, including Istra, as he finally knocked and heard her “Yes? Come in.” There was in her room a wonderful being lolling in a wing-chair, one leg over the chair-arm; a young young man, with broken brown teeth, always seen in his perpetual grin, but a godlike Grecian nose, a high forehead, and bristly yellow hair. The being wore large round tortoise-shell spectacles, a soft shirt with a gold-plated collar-pin, and delicately gray garments. Istra was curled on the bed in a leaf-green silk kimono with a great gold-mounted medallion pinned at her breast. Mr. Wrenn tried not to be shocked at the kimono. She had been frowning as he came in and fingering a long thin green book of verses, but she glowed at Mr. Wrenn as though he were her most familiar friend, murmuring, “Mouse dear, I’m _so_ glad you could come in.” Mr. Wrenn stood there awkwardly. He hadn’t expected to find another visitor. He seemed to have heard her call him “Mouse.” Yes, but what did Mouse mean? It wasn’t his name at all. This was all very confusing. But how awful glad she was to see him! “Mouse dear, this is one of our best little indecent poets, Mr. Carson Haggerty. From America—California—too. Mr. Hag’ty, Mr. Wrenn.” “Pleased meet you,” said both men in the same tone of annoyance. Mr. Wrenn implored: “I—uh—I thought you might like to look at these magazines. Just dropped in to give them to you.” He was ready to go. “Thank you—so good of you. _Please_ sit down. Carson and I were only fighting—he’s going pretty soon. We knew each other at art school in Berkeley. Now he knows all the toffs in London.” “Mr. Wrenn,” said the best little poet, “I hope you’ll back up my contention. Izzy says th—” “Carson, I have told you just about enough times that I do not intend to stand for ‘Izzy’ any more! I should think that even _you_ would be able to outgrow the standard of wit that obtains in first-year art class at Berkeley.”