Arlette stood in the dining-room door, making her silent announcement that dinner was served. Her round eyes, which usually wore an expression of surprise, were now frightened, and she stared at Kendall as if he were some sort of explosive that was likely to go off at any moment with a tremendous explosion. Then she withdrew her head and could be heard padding out to the kitchen.

“Come on,” said Bert. “Dinner’s on.”

“I don’t want any dinner.”

“You don’t deserve any dinner,” said Bert, hotly, “but you’ve got to eat.” He pushed Ken toward the dining-room. “In with you.”

Kendall obeyed apathetically, took his chair and began to eat automatically, without interest in his food. He had anticipated a sort of barbarous pleasure from his harshness toward Andree, but found it ashes in his mouth. He was ashamed of himself, and then ashamed of himself again for being ashamed. He had done right, exactly right, he insisted. She had deserved what he had given her, but nevertheless he was ashamed of himself. There are two identities in every man, the emotional, the sentimental, the natural—and the intellectual. Either of these identities may perform actions satisfactory to itself but abhorrent to the other. Kendall’s intellectual and logical self was content; his emotional self accused him.... If one would be happy, if he would gain and retain affection, if he would have the best gifts of life for himself and those with whom he comes in contact, he should place confidence in his emotional self rather than his intellectual. The emotions are natural and for the most part kindly. They do not operate by rule and precept, but spontaneously; intellect is artificial and logic is without the warmth of life.... Even the law recognizes a distinction, for it does not punish a crime of emotion with the severity that it metes out to the crime of cold reason. Peter was emotional, he denied his Master, yet was forgiven and stands chief of the companions of Christ; Judas took logical thought and betrayed. He committed the unforgivable sin. The difference was not so much in kind as in cause....

“What would you have done?” he demanded, suddenly, of Bert.

“I wouldn’t have been so infernally brutal.... You and I have been friends a long time, haven’t we?... Well, right now I’m nearer to wanting to give you a thrashing than I thought I could ever come. It was rotten!... Poor kid!... And the way she took it! Without a word or a whimper!... But did you see her face?... I came darn near blubbing.”

“She deserved it.... She did. She did a rotten thing—and anybody would think it was I who was to blame. I won’t be put in the wrong.”

“I’m not going to quarrel with you. You asked me what I thought, and I told you.... I wouldn’t have the confounded conscience you have to live with for a million dollars. I’m no angel. I suppose I do a lot of things the righteous folks back home would think were pretty bad. I’m not much on religion, either. But, all the same, if there is a God, I’ll bet He’s a lot more apt to take a liking to the fellow who is a bit off color, but tries to be sort of kind and tolerant, and not to hurt folks, than He is to the man who lives up to every letter and punctuation mark of the law, and does it like a brute.... From what I’ve seen of you stiff-necked, righteous folks, if I were God I’d be pretty average sore to think I had to have heaven crowded with you. You’d irritate me till I let in a bunch of sinners just to get some decent company....”

“Right is right and wrong is wrong.”

“Huh!... Maybe! But who knows what is right and what is wrong? It’s a guess, and everybody does his own guessing.... There are your Ten Commandments, sure enough, but you can’t regulate the whole world and all it does with ten little rules.... Let’s see! Wasn’t there an eleventh commandment later on? I used to go to Sunday-school myself. Something to the effect that you ought to love your neighbor as yourself? A God that could make that sort of a commandment isn’t going to be too stiff-backed about the other ten. No, sir.... Things are too mixed up for anything to be all wrong or all right. Everything’s a mixture—and the more of that love-your-neighbor stuff there is in it, why, my notion is, the nearer it is to what is really good.”

Ken was surprised. He had never accused Bert of so much abstract speculation, and perhaps Bert had not been speculating consciously before. It was rather that these ideas had been taking root in him and growing spontaneously. Possibly Bert was himself astonished to find himself uttering such ideas.

“It’s over now,” Bert said, presently, “so let’s shut up about it. You’re in a devil of a state of mind, and the only thing to get rid of that is to walk it off. As soon as I finish this cheese I’m going to take you out and walk you till you’re human again—or till you drop.”

“I’ll walk.... I’ll do anything. I want to get outdoors and move.”

“Come on, then, sonny, but be genial—be genial. It’s a walk we’re going for, not a march to the grave.”

They walked over to the rue du Faubourg St.-Honoré, which presented to them a face of little second-class shops, dairy products, bakeries, locksmiths, antiques, wine-shops, variety-stores, in front of every second one of which was its cat—a huge, sleek Thomas or a matronly old Tabby keeping an eye on two or three adventurous kittens. The street seemed to have a special leaning toward the feline in pets. But, then, all Paris is a sanctuary for cats, which is remarkable when one takes into account the number of dogs, and even jackals and young foxes, the latter affected by the ladies. It may be that there is a permanent truce between the dogs and cats in Paris. Bert remarked that he had never seen a cat chased by a dog there. Possibly, he declared, it might be the system. American dogs chased cats. It was their moral code to do so; Parisian dogs left cats alone, for a similar reason.

“It’s all a matter of where you live,” he said, in an effort to arouse Kendall. “Maybe there’s a place in the world where they put deacons in jail and look up reverently to burglars. You can’t tell. I suppose folks could agree among themselves to almost anything.”

“Except to alter a natural law,” said Ken, harshly.

“Natural law, eh? What’s a natural law? To be sure, I get you. The shortest distance between two points, and gravitation, and that sort of thing. I guess nobody could change them, but, so far as I can see, they’re the only settled things in the world. Natural laws—pretty good name for them. Means they come right from nature without people’s tinkering with them at all, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“That’s the kind of law for me—the sort you can’t disobey and so get in wrong.... But the other kind—what’ll we call ’em—that’s something else again, Mawrus. The kind of law that has to be agreed upon by a majority before it goes to work isn’t such a serious matter in the long run. I mean, it is important only to the majority that agrees on it. Some other majority in the next county might agree to its exact opposite. Like local option. It’s a sin to sell liquor on one side of a fence and a legitimate business on the other.... Huh!... I never got to thinking how funny it all was before.”

How curious it was, thought Kendall, with quickened interest, that Bert should rather clumsily be following a line of reasoning that he himself had followed with deeper study and more particularity during the past weeks!... Could there really be something in it, after all? He had been sure of it yesterday, but yesterday was gone forever, and that had happened since which made the affairs and reasonings of yesterday repulsive to him.... But—the dogmatism, the harsh, uncompromising, puritanical attitude he had chosen to take quivered a very little on its foundations....

They proceeded onward past the Ministry of the Interior on their left, and on their right the building with its great central court, and its archway through which could be seen broad, red-carpeted steps, which was the French White House—the residence of France’s President. Now small cafés and wine-shops became more numerous, and the shops to partake of a better quality.

“Hey!” said Bert, stopping, “want to introduce you to a friend.” He stepped into a little wine-shop and spoke to the young woman behind the bar, who lifted her voice loudly, calling a name that Kendall could not catch. In a moment a rather dirty, but very bright-eyed, bull-terrier appeared from the rear and stood looking at Bert expectantly. Bert selected a copper from his pocket and put it in the dog’s mouth. The creature waggled his tail violently and trotted out into the street.

“Watch him,” Bert urged.

The dog trotted into the adjoining baker’s shop, barked once sharply with a note of command. A young woman leaned far over the counter, holding out her hand, into which the dog dropped his coin and stood expectant while she selected a roll and handed it to him. Then, in the most dignified manner, he paced back to Bert, waggled his tail in thanks, waited to be patted, and withdrew under a table to eat his dainty.

“There!” said Bert. “Finest dog in Paris. Wish I could buy him. Say, wasn’t that great?”

“Huh!...” grunted Kendall, rather astonished that anybody could be interested in dogs when the world was coming down in awful ruin as his world was coming down.

Bert was offended. To him that dog was one of the sights of Paris, and, when he returned to America, it would be that animal and his little piece of cleverness that he would describe rather than anything else he had seen in Paris. The dog was worth coming to see.... Notre Dame was just a dingy pile of stones.... Yet, somewhere in him was a strain that was able to speculate on the attitude of God toward Pharisees and sinners....

They continued in silence until they reached the Place du Théatre Fran?ais, with the Palais Royal before them and the Comédie Fran?aise, and with the magnificent breadth of the Avenue de l’Opéra angling sharply to the left. Across the open space was the University union, and Bert suggested dropping in to see if any acquaintances were lounging about, when suddenly they were hailed from a distance, and, turning, saw Jacques, wooden leg grotesquely swinging at an angle from his body, hat swinging about his head, and cane describing enthusiastic circles. Jacques was trying to run to catch them. His method was to take two hops with his sound leg and then one lurch with the artificial one. There was a devil-may-care jauntiness about this unusual gait and a good-fellowship about his eccentric salutations that, somehow, always gained him a welcome.

“Ah,” he shouted, when yet he was thirty feet away, “I have find you! I have surround you—eh? Where ’ave you been? I have not seen you for longtemps.... And Monsieur Kendall. It ees well. We are friends and camarades.... I have speak about you thees evening—you, Monsieur Kendall. Ho! you have the great good fortune, n’est-ce pas? I give you my felicitations. I salute you.... Ah, messieurs, eet was magnifique, splendide!...”

“What was magnificent, Jacques? Take a breath and start in fresh,” Bert admonished.

Jacques patted Ken on the back. “Oh, he ees a good boy, thees Monsieur Kendall. He deserve the good fortune, mais, messieurs, it ees of a grandeur. Again I make the congratulations.”

“Why? Why? Why?”

“Bicause,” said Jacques, becoming preternaturally solemn, “bicause monsieur ees loved.” He paused. “Oui, he ees loved ver’ well by beautiful yo’ng girl who ees ver’ fidèle. It ees one beautiful theeng. I make to weep w’en it ees tol’ to me. Vraiment! The tear she stand in my eyes. Sacré nom d’une pipe! but it ees the theme for a poem.”

“What in thunder are you talking about? Light on a bough, little bird, light.” Bert grasped Jacques by the shoulder and pretended to hold him down to earth. “Now, little man, come clean. Tell the story and don’t bubble over.”

“It ees the leetle sweetheart of Monsieur Kendall—thees so graceful and beautiful yo’ng girl that has for her name Andree. She weesh for enter into the Académie and après to be an actress. It is so.... To do this is ver’ difficile. It is necessary first to have much influence. Monsieur Kendall know thees. Yes. Alors, Monsieur Kendall introduce thees yo’ng girl to Monsieur Robert. I am present and see. Also I warn monsieur that thees Robert loves all young girl.... What would you? The theeng befalls yesterday. As Monsieur Robert emerges from the Metro near the Place St.-Miche............