r arms across my knees, and looked
up in my face.

Then first I noted on her left hand a large clumsy glove. In my mind's
eye I saw hair and claws under it, but I knew it was a hand shut
hard--perhaps badly bruised. I glanced at the other: it was lovely as
hand could be, and I felt that, if I did less than loathe her, I should
love her. Not to dally with usurping emotions, I turned my eyes aside.

She started to her feet. I sat motionless, looking down.

"To me she may be true!" said my vanity. For a moment I was tempted to
love a lie.

An odour, rather than the gentlest of airy pulses, was fanning me.
I glanced up. She stood erect before me, waving her lovely arms in
seemingly mystic fashion.

A frightful roar made my heart rebound against the walls of its cage.
The alabaster trembled as if it would shake into shivers. The princess
shuddered visibly.

"My wine was too strong for you!" she said, in a quavering voice; "I
ought not to have let you take a full draught! Go and sleep now, and
when you wake ask me what you please.--I will go with you: come."

As she preceded me up the stair,--

"I do not wonder that roar startled you!" she said. "It startled me, I
confess: for a moment I feared she had escaped. But that is impossible."

The roar seemed to me, however--I could not tell why--to come from the
WHITE leopardess, and to be meant for me, not the princess.

With a smile she left me at the door of my room, but as she turned I
read anxiety on her beautiful face.

CHAPTER XXVI. A BATTLE ROYAL

I threw myself on the bed, and began to turn over in my mind the tale
she had told me. She had forgotten herself, and, by a single incautious
word, removed one perplexity as to the condition in which I found her in
the forest! The leopardess BOUNDED over; the princess lay prostrate on
the bank: the running stream had dissolved her self-enchantment! Her own
account of the object of her journey revealed the danger of the Little
Ones then imminent: I had saved the life of their one fearful enemy!

I had but reached this conclusion when I fell asleep. The lovely wine
may not have been quite innocent.

When I opened my eyes, it was night. A lamp, suspended from the ceiling,
cast a clear, although soft light through the chamber. A delicious
languor infolded me. I seemed floating, far from land, upon the bosom of
a twilight sea. Existence was in itself pleasure. I had no pain. Surely
I was dying!

No pain!--ah, w