In the dark corridor, on the apartment door, a dim square of white caught his eye--the Worm's little placard. An inner voice whispered to light a match and read it again. He did so. For he was all inner voices now. There it was: DO NOT FEED OR ANNOY BOLBOCERAS AMERICANUS MULS HABITAT HERE! He studied it while his match burned out. He knit his brows, puzzled, groping after blind thoughts, little moles of thoughts deep in dark burrows. He let himself in. The others were asleep. The Worm, in his odd humors, never lacked point or meaning. The placard meant something, of course... something that Peter could use.... The Worm had been reading--that rather fat book lying even now on the arm of the Morris 'chair It was _Fabre, on Insect Life_. He snatched it up and turned the pages. He sought the index for that word. There it was--Bolbuceras, page 225. Back then to page 225! He read: “... a pretty little black beetle, with a pale, velvety abdomen... Its official title is _Bulbuceras Gallicus Muls_.” He looked up, in perplexity. This was hardly self-explanatory. He read on. The bolboceras, it began to appear, was a hunter of truffles. Truffles it would, must have. It would eat no common food but wandered about sniffing out its vegetable prey in the sandy soil and digging for each separate morsel, then moving on in its quest. It made no permanent home for itself. Peter raised his eyes and stared at the bookcase in the corner. Very slowly a light crept into his eyes, an excited smile came to the corners of his mouth. There was matter here! And Peter, like Homer, felt no hesitation about taking his own where he found it. He read on, a description of the burrows as explored by the hand of the scientist: “_Often the insect will be found at the bottom of its burrow; sometimes a male, sometimes a female, but always alone. The two sexes work apart without collaboration. This is no family mansion for the rearing of offspring; it is a temporary dwelling, made by each insect for its own benefit_.” Peter laid the book down almost reverently and stood gazing out the window at the Square. He quite forgot to consider what the Worm had been thinking of when he printed out the little placard and tacked it on the door. He could see it only as a perfect characterization of the bachelor girls. Every one of those girls and women was a _Bolboceras_, a confirmed seeker of pleasures and delicacies in the sober game of life, utterly self-indulgent, going it alone--a truffle hunter. He would call his play, _The Bolboceras_. But no. “Buyers from Shreveport would fumble it,” he thought, shrewdly practical. “You've got to use words of one syllable on Broadway.” He paced the room--back and forth, back and forth. _The Truffle-Hunter_, perhaps. Pretty good, that! But no--wait! He stood motionless in the middle of the long room, eyes staring, the muscles of his face strained out of shape, hands clenched tightly..He was about to create a new thing.