"If there were no duty on pictures the States would be flooded with
trash."

"Take it off!" cried one.

"Make it higher!" shouted another.

"Idiots!" growled Rhodes. "Let 'em flood the country with bad work
as well as good. It will educate the people, and the day will come
when all good work will stand an equal chance -- be it French or be it
American."

"True," said Clifford, "Let's all have a bock. Where's Rex?"

But Gethryn had slipped out in the confusion. Quitting the Cafe des
Ecoles, he sauntered across the street, and turning through the Rue de
Vaugirard, entered the rue Monsieur le Prince. He crossed the dim
courtyard of his hotel, and taking a key and a candle from the lodge
of the Concierge, started to mount the six flights to his bedroom and
studio. He felt irritable and fagged, and it did not make matters
better when he found, on reaching his own door, that he had taken the
wrong key. Nor did it ease his mind to fling the key over the
banisters into the silent stone hallway below. He leaned sulkily over
the railing and listened to it ring and clink down into the darkness,
and then, with a brief but vigorous word, he turned and forced in his
door with a crash. Two bull pups which had flown at him with
portentous growls and yelps of menace now gamboled idiotically about
him, writhing with anticipation of caresses, and a gray and scarlet
parrot, rudely awakened, launched forth upon a musical effort
resembling the song of a rusty cart-wheel.