Sacheverell's face grew serenely grave. "No one has the green cat," he reproved Phil. "It would not be permitted. He has us. We are his humble worshippers, his primal hierophants."
"But I want to see him," Phil said.
"That will be permitted," Sacheverell assured Phil, "when he wakes and the world changes. Meanwhile, compose yourself, er ... Phil Gish, you say? Phil ... philo ... love ... an auspicious name."
"Why the mucking hell is this green cat so important, anyhow? What is it?"
The two men turned. Juno was still standing on the threshold. She was swayed forward a little, hugging her elbows, yet had her shoulders squared and was glaring at them surlily, like a rebellious schoolgirl.
"The green cat is love," Sacheverell told her softly. "The love that blossoms even from hate."
There was another interruption. This one took the form of a coy, girlish snicker. Phil turned to the side of the room he had not yet inspected closely, the one facing the fireplace. In it was a deep, wide bay window closely shuttered with gray jalousies, as were all the other windows in the room except for one fronting on darkness beside the fireplace. In the bay was a semicircular couch on which Mary Akeley sprawled adolescently, still in black sweater and stiff, red skirt.
"You know," she said, "I just can't get used to the idea of loving everything. Sacheverell says I've got to be nice to my little people and stop sticking hatpins in them and things, but it's hard."
For a morbid moment Phil thought she was referring to the cats. Then he saw that there were a series of narrow shelves behind her, starting at the top of the couch and going halfway up the bay and that these shelves were crowded with dolls. Moving closer, he saw they were not ordinary dolls, but extremely realistic human figures, most of them about six inches high. He had never seen dolls so perfectly formed or realistically dressed. There must have been two or three hundred. They stood behind Mary like the cross-section of a crowded three-level street in some tiny living world. In front of the couch was a low table crowded with blocks of wax, molds, micro-tools and magnifiers, several partially completed figurines and piled squares of fabrics so delicate they must have been woven specially.
"You like my little people?" he heard Mary ask him. "Most everyone does. I got started out making strip-tease dolls, but these that are all my own are so much more fun. Sacheverell, I think they like having pins stuck through them. I think that's the way they want to be loved."