And the bird told of how a dove had come and had carried off in its beak the ring the woman had given it. He told how presently had come a fine looking man with a shining about his head, not flying but luxuriously riding through the air upon a gold cloud, with cherubs’ heads floating about him; and how the woman and the child had gone away upon this same cloud, surrounded by, the gander thought, extremely fretful looking cherubs. “The whole affair has upset me very much,” said the gander, “for I was composing, and I can never bear to be interrupted.” And the gander sang to Florian of the proper way in which children should be born and should live thereafter. About the glory of love and the felicities of marriage, about patriotism and success in business and about the high assurances of religion, the gander sang, and about optimism and philanthropy and about the steady advancing of every kind of social improvement. And of man that is the child and heir of God, and of the splendor of man’s works, and of the magnanimity of human nature, and of the wonder of man’s living upon earth, the gander sang also. “Parbleu, but let us be logical about this!” said Florian. “Your art is very pleasing; but it embellishes a lazar-house with pastels. For human living is not at all like the song you have made concerning it.” “So much the worse for human living,” the gander answered. “It does not bother me here in my cage. Besides, the purpose and the effect of my singing, like that of all great singing, is to fill my fellows with a sentiment of their importance as moral beings and of the greatness of their destinies. So I do not mimic. I create.” Florian looked at the gander for some while, and Florian sighed. This creature too had in it nothing of the realist, Florian reflected, and it preferred to live by its own code; but its æsthetic theories coincided with Hoprig’s. And the hermitage of that—somehow—ambiguous Hoprig was still to seek. Florian left the imprisoned gander singing very gloriously, and Florian went now across Morven, that place of abominable fame. These uplands were thickly overgrown with a queer vine that had large oval leaves, the green of which was mottled with red, somewhat like the skin of snakes. Here also grew strawberry vines. As he walked this undergrowth was continually catching in the buckles of Florian’s shoes. Everywhere were inexplicable soft noises, and about his face danced a small cloud of midges.