I came out in her kimono, which I was bursting through ... my arms
sticking out to my elbow.

She laughed herself almost into hysteria at my funny appearance.

* * * * *

"It will be quite safe to-night. I don't think he'd venture out. This is
a hurricane, not a rainstorm ... besides, I believe he's a little afraid
of you, Johnnie ... I was watching him rather closely, while I handled
him, the other night ... he kept an uneasy eye on you all the time."

"God, but you were superb, Hildreth ... if you could only act that way
on the stage!--"

"I _could_ act that way on the stage," she replied unexpectedly, a
trifle put out....

Then--

"A woman has to do many things to save herself--"

"Oh, I swear that you are the most marvellous, the most beautiful woman
in the world ... I love you ... I adore you ... I'd die for you ...
right here ... now!"

* * * * *

As we lay there in the dark the storm pulled and tugged and battered as
if with great, sinister hands, striving to get in at us.

Hildreth trembled in my arms, shaking afresh at each shock of the wind
and the rain.

"Don't be afraid, my little woman!"

"I wonder if he'd dare come down to-night?"

"If he did, and caught us, I'd kill him."

"He knows that, if he knows anything, I'm sure ... that's why I think
we're all right!"

And she came up closer into my arms with a sigh of content.

* * * * *

I had been asleep....

The sudden madness and saturnalia of love into which I had these few
weeks been plunged tapped, it seemed, my subliminal consciousness, maybe
my memory of former incarnations....

I never had such a vision in my life....

I was fully aware of my surroundings, yet through them shone another, a
far reality that belonged to me, too.

I described it to Hildreth, as she lay, thrilled, beside me.

A cave ... high up on the hill-crest ... our cave, that we had imagined,
now come true....

I was a huge chap, with a girdle of leaves about my waist ... strange,
tropic leaves ... there was black hair all over my body ... there was a
little, red fire back in the cave's obscurity....

I had come in, casting a dead fawn down from my shoulder....

Hildreth came forward ... it was plainly she ... though with fine red
hair like down on her legs....

"But your name is Naa ... my name is Kaa, the hunter, the slayer of
good, red meat."

"Johnnie