“Three,” answered Braith.
There was a howl, and all began to talk at once.
“There’s justice for you!” “No justice for Americans!” “Serves us right for our tariff!” “Are Frenchmen going to give us all the advantages of their schools and honors besides while we do all we can to keep their pictures out of our markets?”
“No, we don’t, either! Tariff only keeps out the sweepings of the studios—”
“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 Café des Écoles, 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 hôtel, 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.