her and turn her loose. Let me ask you one
thing--what would Miss Chester think?"

"Oh, that doesn't worry me," said Graves. "But I _am_ worried--worried
sick. It's early--shall we talk now, or wait till after lunch?"

"Now," I said.

"Well," said he, "you left me pretty well enthused on the subject of
botany--so I went back there twice to look up grasses for you. The
second time I went I got to a deep sort of valley where the grass is
waist-high--that, by the way, is where the big monolith is--and that
place was alive with things that were frightened and ran. I could see
the directions they took by the way the grass tops acted. There were
lots of loose stones about and I began to throw 'em to see if I could
knock one of the things over. Suddenly all at once I saw a pair of
bright little eyes peering out of a bunch of grass--I let fly at them,
and something gave a sort of moan and thrashed about in the grass--and
then lay still. I went to look, and found that I'd stunned--_her_. She
came to and tried to bite me, but I had her by the scruff of the neck
and she couldn't. Further, she was sick with being hit in the chest with
the stone, and first thing I knew she keeled over in the palm of my hand
in a dead faint. I couldn't find any water or anything--and I didn't
want her to die--so I brought her home. She was sick for a week--and I
took care of her--as I would a sick pup--and she began to get well and
want to play and romp and poke into everything. She'd get the lower
drawer of my desk open and hide in it--or crawl into a rubber boot and
play house. And she got to be right good company--same as any pet
does--a cat or a dog--or a monkey--and naturally, she being so small, I
couldn't think of her as anything but a sort of little beast that I'd
caught and tamed.... You see how it all happened, don't you? Might have
happened to anybody."

"Why, yes," I said. "If she didn't give a man the horrors right at the
start--I can understand making a sort of pet of her--but, man, there's
only one thing to do. Be persuaded. Take her back where you found her,
and turn her loose."

"Well and good," said Graves. "I tried that, and next morning I found
her at my door, sobbing--horrible, dry sobs--no tears.... You've said
one thing that's full of sense: she isn't a pig--or a monkey--she's a
woman."

"You don't mean to say," said I, "that that mite of a thing is in love
with you?"

"I don't know what else you'd call it."

"Graves