Paul, stretching himself, decided to get up. And for a moment he remained standing in front of Gerrit, in his pink pyjamas:
"Do you think Ernst is really mad?" he asked.
"Perhaps it's not so bad as that," Gerrit ventured.
"Everybody is a little mad," said Paul.
"Oh, I say!" said Gerrit, in an offended voice.
"No, not you," said Paul, genially. "Not you or I. But everybody else has a tile loose. I'm going to have my bath."
"Don't be long."
"All right."
Paul disappeared in his little bathroom; and Gerrit, who was suffocating, flung open the windows, so that the bedroom suddenly became filled with the patter of the summer rain. And Gerrit looked around him. He had hardly ever been here, at Paul's; and he was now struck by the exquisite tidiness of the rooms. Paul had a bedroom, a sitting-room and a dressing-room in which he had installed his tub.
"What a tidy beggar he is!" thought Gerrit and looked around him.