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"He jerked himself to and fro across his cramped, rickety cage and
looked over my head with yellow eyes--at some phantom far away.
Every now and then he snarled. The contempt of his detestable
indifference sank deeper and deeper into my soul. I knew that were
the cage to vanish I should stand there motionless, his helpless
prey. I knew that were he at large in the same building with me I
should be too terror-stricken to escape him. At the foot of a
ladder leading clear to escape I should have awaited him paralyzed.
At last I gripped my nurse's hand. 'Take me away,' I whispered.
"In my dreams that night he stalked me. I made my frozen flight
from him, I slammed a door on him, and he thrust his paw through a
panel as though it had been paper and clawed for me. The paw got
longer and longer. . . .
"I screamed so loudly that my father came up from his study.
"I remember that he took me in his arms.
"'It's only a big sort of pussy, Poff,' he said. 'FELIS TIGRIS.
FELIS, you know, means cat.'
"But I knew better. I was in no mood then for my father's
insatiable pedagoguery.


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