tillness and
lack of excitement in the neighbourhood encouraged the hope that, as
yet, the inhabitants were unaware that so formidable a guest traversed
their highways. The heat had driven them indoors, whence outdrifted
occasional shrill laughs, or the depressing whine of a maltreated
concertina. In the shade a few Mexican children, like vivified stolid
idols in clay, stared from their play, vision-struck and silent, as
Alvarita came and went. Here and there a woman peeped from a door and
stood dumb, reduced to silence by the aspect of the white silk
parasol.

A hundred yards and the limits of the town were passed, scattered
chaparral succeeding, and then a noble grove, overflowing the bijou
canon. Through this a small bright stream meandered. Park-like it was,
with a kind of cockney ruralness further endorsed by the waste papers
and rifled tins of picnickers. Up this stream, and down it, among
its pseudo-sylvan glades and depressions, wandered the bright and
unruffled Alvarita. Once she saw evidence of the recreant reptile's
progress in his distinctive trail across a spread of fine sand in the
arroyo. The living water was bound to lure him; he could not be far
away.

So sure was she of his immediate proximity that she perched herself
to idle for a time in the curve of a great creeper that looped down
from a giant water-elm. To reach this she climbed from the pathway a
little distance up the side of a steep and rugged incline. Around her
chaparral grew thick and high. A late-blooming ratama tree dispensed
from its yellow petals a sweet and persistent odour. Adown the ravine
rustled a seductive wind, melancholy with the taste of sodden, fallen
leaves.

Alvarita removed her hat, and undoing the oppressive convolutions of
her hair, began to slowly arrange it in two long, dusky plaits.

From the obscure depths of a thick clump of evergreen shrubs five feet
away, two small jewel-bright eyes were steadfastly regarding her.
Coiled there lay Kuku, the great python; Kuku, the magnificent, he
of the plated muzzle, the grooved lips, the eleven-foot stretch of
elegantly and brilliantly mottled skin. The great python was viewing
his mistress without a sound or motion to disclose his presence.
Perhaps the splendid truant forefelt his capture, but, screened by the
foliage, thought to prolong the delight of his escapade. What pleasure
it was, after the hot and dusty car, to lie thus, smelling the running
water, and feeling the a