m and gay and moody--joyous and absurd--full of
little confiding gestures--a nose pressed under one's chin, or a paw
laid in alluring appeal on one's hand. Withal he was detached with the
detachment of his separate universe--a divine world of smells and sounds
and ever new adventurous possibilities, unspoilt by memory and
untarnished by experience.

Dogs are the best company in the world--I would watch Fido abandoning
himself to each moment of the day, the victim or the hero of a hundred
impulses, torn by competing smells and sounds as we are torn by
overlapping warring emotions and ambitions.

And then he would lie sprawling in front of the fire with a half open
eye and when you said "Fido" his ears would answer you, taut with
response, while his tail would beat the floor in indolent happiness. Is
there anything in life so infectiously joyous as a wagging tail? Worry,
distress, crossness, all melt at the sight of it--a hypnotic
conductor's, baton beating the rhythm of triumphant joie de vivre.

Fido was a daily, hourly delight.

I would shut my eyes, to be able to open them suddenly and
realise--with fresh acuteness--his infinite variety. There was to me
something poignant about his loveliness like an open rose in whose very
perfection lies the herald of doom. I loved him too much. The cynical
masterpieces of the past looking at his beauty smiled in satisfied
revenge for they knew that he was alive and that life means death. Love
gives mortality to everything.

Fido grew limp and listless. His nose was hot and dry. He no longer
trotted about, he wandered from room to room. His eyes were dull. His
heart bumped about like money in a money-box. With an effort he wagged
his tail to cheer me up. Wearily he would climb into a chair and lie
there indifferent to my trembling caresses.

Fido died.

* * * * *

I gave up looking at dogs, alive or china, embroidered or painted.
Fortunately most of my friends have "pets," griffons that look like
tropical spiders, little shiny naked shivering animals, bloated
prosperous Pekineses, exuding the complacency of their mistresses and
seeming to be rather the last word of a dressmaker, or a furrier, than a
creation of the Gods.

If I saw a sheepdog, or a greyhound, a spaniel or a retriever, I would
avert my eyes, shivering a little as when the hitherto harmless buzzing
machine reaches the hidden nerve.

"Don't you like dogs?" people would say.