"These cakes belong to me," she proclaimed, snatching up the china basket and hugging it to her breast. The waiter protested that they had not been paid for; but she swept him and his remonstrances aside, and passed out triumphantly into the corridor, where the proprietor of the hotel, a short, greasy man, began to abuse her for the way she had treated Florilor. "_Va-t-en_," she said, scornfully. "_Quoi? Quoi ditez? Moi bâton? Non! Vous bâton! Comprenez?_" He was in such a rage at the idea of Sylvia's threatening him with a stick, which was the way he understood her French, that he began to dribble; all his words were drowned in a foam of saliva, and the only way he could express his opinion of her behavior was by rapid expectoration. Again Sylvia tried to pass him in the narrow corridor, instinctively holding up the cakes beyond his reach. The proprietor evidently thought she was going to bring down the basket upon his head, and in an access of fear and fury he managed to knock it out of her hands. "Those cakes are mine," Sylvia really screamed. She felt like a cat defending her kittens when she plunged down upon the floor to pick them up. The proprietor jumped right over her, stamping upon the cakes and the pieces of broken china and grinding them underfoot into the carpet until it looked like a pavement of broken mosaics. Sylvia completely lost her temper at the sight of the destruction of her dinner; and when the proprietor trod upon her hand in the course of his violence she picked up the broken handle of the basket and jabbed his instep, which made him yell so loudly that all the hidden population of the kitchens came out like disturbed animals, holding in their hands the implements of the tasks upon which they had been engaged. "_Vous payez! Vous payez tout! Oui, oui, vous payez_!" the proprietor shouted. The intensity of his anger made his veins swell and his nose bleed, and, not being able to find a handkerchief, he began to bellow for the attentions of his staff. This seemed an appropriate moment for the waiter to get himself back into his master's good graces, and with a towel in one hand and a chamber-pot in the other he came running out of the room where he had been hiding. At the sight of more china the proprietor uttered a stupendous Rumanian oath and kicked the pot out of the waiter's hand with such force that a piece of it flew up and cut his cheek. Sylvia left a momentarily increasing concourse of servants chattering round their master and the man, each of whom was stanching blood with his own end of the towel they held between them: they were all shoveling aside bits of china while they talked, so that they seemed like noisy hens scratching in a garden. Queenie was standing with big, frightened eyes when Sylvia got back to their room. "Whatever was happening?" "An argument over our dinner," Sylvia laughed.