thing, nestling up to someone, or
giving someone a gentle and furtive nudge. Again the Father thought of
that terrible, pale woman who had haunted churches. Several times he had
come upon her waiting for him after evening services. Once she had hung
her head smiling, had lolled out her tongue and pushed against him
sideways in the dark. He remembered how his flesh had shrunk from the
poor thing, the sick loathing of her that he could not banish by
remembering that her mind was all astray. The parrot paused, listened,
opened his beak, and again said something in the same dove-like, amorous
voice, full of sickly suggestion and yet hard, even dangerous, in its
intonation. A loathsome voice, the Father thought it. But this time,
although he heard the voice more distinctly than before, he could not
make up his mind whether it was like a woman's voice or a man's--or
perhaps a child's. It seemed to be a human voice, and yet oddly sexless.
In order to resolve his doubt he withdrew into the darkness of the
curtains, ceased to watch Napoleon and simply listened with keen
attention, striving to forget that he was listening to a bird, and to
imagine that he was overhearing a human being in conversation. After two
or three minutes' silence the voice spoke again, and at some length,
apparently repeating several times an affectionate series of
ejaculations with a cooing emphasis that was unutterably mawkish and
offensive. The sickliness of the voice, its falling intonations and its
strange indelicacy, combined with a die-away softness and meretricious
refinement, made the Father's flesh creep. Yet he could not distinguish
any words, nor could he decide on the voice's sex or age. One thing
alone he was certain of as he stood still in the darkness,--that such a
sound could only proceed from something peculiarly loathsome, could only
express a personality unendurably abominable to him, if not to
everybody. The voice presently failed, in a sort of husky gasp, and
there was a prolonged silence. It was broken by the Professor, who
suddenly pulled away the curtains that hid the Father and said to him:

"Come out now, and look."

The Father came into the light, blinking, glanced towards the cage, and
saw Napoleon poised motionless on one foot with his head under his wing.
He appeared to be asleep. The Professor was pale, and his mobile lips
were drawn into an expression of supreme disgust.

"Faugh!" he said.

He walked to the windows of