While all this was going on, Phil, completely to his surprise, walked coolly over to the shelves of figurines, carefully picked up that of Mitzie, and put it in his jacket pocket. When he turned around, Jack had selected a black glass Aztec sacrificial knife from the fallen religious objects and writhed to his knees like a cobra. Juno picked up a rather small, but very solid, brass Buddha. Nearer the velvet curtains, Cookie had Sacheverell on his back and was choking him, while Sacheverell, though his shoulder was pinned, was industriously trying to beat Cookie on the head with the silver chalice from which the cats had been drinking. Mary had grabbed up some hatpins and darted forward. She hesitated whom to attack, then started for Cookie--not so much, Phil fancied, to help her husband but because Cookie's "ugly" had rankled. Never before, not even in the trenches and foxholes, had Phil Gish seen real murder in a human face. Now he saw it in five. And then, very suddenly, it wasn't there at all. The room grew very still. The black glass knife and the chalice clattered from Jack's and Sacheverell's hands. Mary's hatpins struck the floor with a faint, vibrant rattle. Juno's Buddha thudded on the Moslem prayer rug. Cookie's hands unlocked themselves and writhed back, as if ashamed even before they had a message from the brain. Expressions unlocked too. Hate furrows softened and vanished. Lips that had writhed back from teeth moistly returned. Eyes filled with painful understanding. Jack said, in a soft, amazed voice, "Juno, you really do love me. You don't just want to own me and shame me as a man." Juno said, "You really do care what I think, don't you, Jack? Gosh!" Cookie said, "I didn't realize it, Sacheverell: you partly mean what you say. It isn't all faking." Mary said, "And you actually want Jack to be happy, Cookie. It isn't simply vanity and envy." Sacheverell said, "My God, it's happening. And I mostly thought it was a stunt I was stage managing." As for Phil, his feelings were in that golden sea they'd swum in this afternoon. He felt as if his heart were joined by sensitive strands to those of the five persons around him. It even seemed to him that there were delicate, gossamer wires connecting him to the figurines so that he understood Romadka, Barnes, Vanadin, maybe even himself. Then, simultaneously with the others, he turned toward the velvet curtains. A few inches above the floor, Lucky's little green head had poked through. It hung there like a large green jewel, flooding them in turn with its mellow rays. Then Lucky pushed all the way through the curtains. Swiftly, from under tables and chairs, out from the fireplace, and from behind tiers of books, all the other cats appeared and gathered around Lucky in a circle. "It has begun," Sacheverell whispered happily. "The world is changing." "Saint Francis of Assisi," Mary murmured weakly, "incarnate in a cat."