ps.

We passed into the drawing-room. The ladies were grouped together at one
end, near the piano. Margot was among them. She was, as usual, dressed
in white, and round the bottom of her gown there was an edging of
snow-white fur. As we came in, she moved away from the piano to a
sofa at some distance, and sank down upon it. Professor Black, who had
entered the room at my side, seized my arm gently.

"Now, that lady," he whispered in my ear--"I don't know who she may
be, but she is intensely cat-like. I observed it before dinner. Did you
notice the way she moved just then--the soft, yielding, easy manner in
which she sat down, falling at once, quite naturally, into a charming
pose? And her china-blue eyes are----"

"She is my wife, Professor," I interrupted harshly.

He looked decidedly taken aback.

"I beg your pardon; I had no idea. I did not enter the drawing-room
to-night till after you arrived. I believed that lady was one of
my fellow-guests in the house. Let me congratulate you. She is very
beautiful."

And then he mingled rather hastily in the group near the piano.

The man is mad, I know--mad as a hatter on one point, like so many
clever men. He sees the animal in every person he meets just because his
preposterous theory inclines him to do so. Having given in his adherence
to it, he sees facts not as they are, but as he wishes them to be; but
he shall not carry me with him. The theory is his, not mine. It does not
hold water for a moment. I can laugh at it now, but that night I confess
it did seize me for the time being. I could scarcely talk; I found
myself watching Margot with a terrible intentness, and I found myself
agreeing with the Professor to an extent that made me marvel at my own
previous blindness.

There was something strangely feline about the girl I had married--the
soft, white girl who was becoming terrible to me, dear though she still
was and must always be. Her movements had the subtle, instinctive and
certain grace of a cat's. Her cushioned step, which had often struck me
before, was like the step of a cat. And those china-blue eyes! A sudden
cold seemed to pass over me as I understood why I had recognised
them when I first met Margot. They were the eyes of the animal I
had tortured, the animal I had killed. Yes, but that proved nothing,
absolutely nothing. Many people had the eyes of animals--the soft eyes
of dogs, the furtive, cruel eyes of tigers. I had known such people. I
had e