st bull
had entered, and, after a rather brief play with the picadors and
banderilleros, was dispatched. At the moment when the matador approached
the bull with his lethal weapon I was not sorry for an excuse to glance
at Miss Mannersley. Her hands were in her lap, her head slightly bent
forward over her knees. I fancied that she, too, had dropped her
eyes before the brutal situation; to my horror, I saw that she had a
drawing-book in her hand and was actually sketching it. I turned my eyes
in preference to the dying bull.

The second animal led out for this ingenious slaughter was, however,
more sullen, uncertain, and discomposing to his butchers. He accepted
the irony of a trial with gloomy, suspicious eyes, and he declined
the challenge of whirling and insulting picadors. He bristled with
banderillas like a hedgehog, but remained with his haunches backed
against the barrier, at times almost hidden in the fine dust raised by
the monotonous stroke of his sullenly pawing hoof--his one dull, heavy
protest. A vague uneasiness had infected his adversaries; the picadors
held aloof, the banderilleros skirmished at a safe distance. The
audience resented only the indecision of the bull. Galling epithets
were flung at him, followed by cries of "ESPADA!" and, curving his elbow
under his short cloak, the matador, with his flashing blade in hand,
advanced and--stopped. The bull remained motionless.

For at that moment a heavier gust of wind than usual swept down upon
the arena, lifted a suffocating cloud of dust, and whirled it around the
tiers of benches and the balcony, and for a moment seemed to stop the
performance. I heard an exclamation from the geologist, who had risen to
his feet. I fancied I heard even a faint cry from Miss Mannersley; but
the next moment, as the dust was slowly settling, we saw a sheet
of paper in the air, that had been caught up in this brief cyclone,
dropping, dipping from side to side on uncertain wings, until it slowly
descended in the very middle of the arena. It was a leaf from Miss
Mannersley's sketchbook, the one on which she had been sketching.

In the pause that followed it seemed to be the one object that at last
excited the bull's growing but tardy ire. He glanced at it with murky,
distended eyes; he snorted at it with vague yet troubled fury. Whether
he detected his own presentment in Miss Mannersley's sketch, or
whether he recognized it as an unknown and unfamiliar treachery in his
surro