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Benham stood quite motionless, and body and mind had halted
together. That confrontation had an interminableness that had
nothing to do with the actual passage of time. Then some trickle of
his previous thoughts stirred in the frozen quiet of his mind.
He spoke hoarsely. "I am Man," he said, and lifted a hand as he
spoke. "The Thought of the world."
His heart leapt within him as the tiger moved. But the great beast
went sideways, gardant, only that its head was low, three noiseless
instantaneous strides it made, and stood again watching him.
"Man," he said, in a voice that had no sound, and took a step
forward.
"Wough!" With two bounds the monster had become a great grey streak
that crackled and rustled in the shadows of the trees. And then it
had vanished, become invisible and inaudible with a kind of
instantaneousness.
For some seconds or some minutes Benham stood rigid, fearlessly
expectant, and then far away up the ravine he heard the deer repeat
their cry of alarm, and understood with a new wisdom that the tiger
had passed among them and was gone.


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