aping fountain, and reflected what to do. In that empty
room there was nothing to my purpose; I felt, besides, that I required
assistance. There shot into my mind a hope that Olalla herself might be
my helper, and I turned and went downstairs, still keeping my thumb
upon the wound.

There was no sign of either Olalla or Felipe, and I addressed myself to
the recess, whither the Senora had now drawn quite back and sat dozing
close before the fire, for no degree of heat appeared too much for her.

"Pardon me," said I, "if I disturb you, but I must apply to you for
help."

She looked up sleepily and asked me what it was, and with the very words
I thought she drew in her breath with a widening of the nostrils and
seemed to come suddenly and fully alive.

"I have cut myself," I said, "and rather badly. See!" And I held out my
two hands, from which the blood was oozing and dripping.

Her great eyes opened wide, the pupils shrank into points; a veil seemed
to fall from her face, and leave it sharply expressive and yet
inscrutable. And as I still stood, marvelling a little at her
disturbance, she came swiftly up to me, and stooped and caught me by the
hand; and the next moment my hand was at her mouth, and she had bitten
me to the bone. The pang of the bite, the sudden spurting of blood, and
the monstrous horror of the act, flashed through me all in one, and I
beat her back; and she sprang at me again and again, with bestial cries,
cries that I recognised, such cries as had awakened me on the night of
the high wind. Her strength was like that of madness; mine was rapidly
ebbing with the loss of blood; my mind besides was whirling with the
abhorrent strangeness of the onslaught, and I was already forced against
the wall, when Olalla ran betwixt us, and Felipe, following at a bound,
pinned down his mother on the floor.

A trance-like weakness fell upon me; I saw, heard, and felt, but I was
incapable of movement. I heard the struggle roll to and fro upon the
floor, the yells of the catamount ringing up to heaven as she strove to
reach me. I felt Olalla clasp me in her arms, her hair falling on my
face, and, with the strength of a man, raise and half drag, half carry
me upstairs into my own room, where she cast me down upon the bed. Then
I saw her hasten to the door and lock it, and stand an instant listening
to the savage cries that shook the residencia. And then, swift and light
as a thought, she was again beside me, binding