"Richard!" the voice sounded a second time. This time the sound seemed
but a few paces from him, but it arose from the ground as though a
teasing goblin lay under his chair.

He bent over and peered into dark corners.

The mystery was solved: Joko, Alice's parrot, having secretly stolen
from his quarters, sat on the rung of a chair and played the evil
conscience of the house.

The tame animal stepped with dignity upon his outstretched hand and
permitted itself to be lifted into the light.... Its glittering
neck-feathers stood up, and while it whetted its beak on Niebeldingk's
cuff-links, it repeated in a most subterranean voice: "Richard!"

And suddenly the dear feeling of belonging here, of being at home came
over Niebeldingk. He had all but lost it. But its gentle power drew
him on and refreshed him.

It was his right and his duty to be at home here where a dear woman
lived so exclusively for him that the voice of her yearning sounded
even from the tongue of the brute beast that she possessed! There was
no possibility of feeling free and alien here.

"I must find her!" he thought quickly, "I musn't leave her alone
another second."

He set Joko carefully on the table and sought to reach her bed-room
which he had never entered by this approach.