he night before. Without a pause he went up, and the leopardess
followed. I quickened my pace, but, a moment after, heard a cry of
horror. Then came the fall of something soft and heavy between me and
the stair, and at my feet lay a body, frightfully blackened and crushed,
but still recognisable as that of the woman who had led me home and shut
me out. As I stood petrified, the spotted leopardess came bounding down
the stair with a baby in her mouth. I darted to seize her ere she
could turn at the foot; but that instant, from behind me, the white
leopardess, like a great bar of glowing silver, shot through the
moonlight, and had her by the neck. She dropped the child; I caught it
up, and stood to watch the battle between them.

What a sight it was--now the one, now the other uppermost, both too
intent for any noise beyond a low growl, a whimpered cry, or a snarl of
hate--followed by a quicker scrambling of claws, as each, worrying
and pushing and dragging, struggled for foothold on the pavement! The
spotted leopardess was larger than the white, and I was anxious for my
friend; but I soon saw that, though neither stronger nor more active,
the white leopardess had the greater endurance. Not once did she lose
her hold on the neck of the other. From the spotted throat at length
issued a howl of agony, changing, by swift-crowded gradations, into the
long-drawn CRESCENDO of a woman's uttermost wail. The white one relaxed
her jaws; the spotted one drew herself away, and rose on her hind legs.
Erect in the moonlight stood the princess, a confused rush of shadows
careering over her whiteness--the spots of the leopard crowding,
hurrying, fleeing to the refuge of her eyes, where merging they
vanished. The last few, outsped and belated, mingled with the cloud
of her streamy hair, leaving her radiant as the moon when a legion of
little vapours has flown, wind-hunted, off her silvery disc--save that,
adown the white column of her throat, a thread of blood still trickled
from every wound of her adversary's terrible teeth. She turned away,
took a few steps with the gait of a Hecate, fell, covered afresh with
her spots, and fled at a long, stretching gallop.

The white leopardess turned also, sprang upon me, pulled my arms
asunder, caught the baby as it fell, and flew with it along the street
toward the gate.

CHAPTER XXVII. THE SILENT FOUNTAIN

I turned and followed the spotted leopardess, catching but one glimpse
of her as s