ckly_)

Enough. Don't recall it. Fever is the beginning of the thing one never
speaks of.

TOBY-DOG, (_shivering_)

Yes, I know.... I don't like an animal that can't move. You know what I
mean ...

KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (_laughing cruelly_)

Nor do I. I can only eat live birds, and as for the tiny mice, I prefer
to swallow them, squeak and all....

TOBY-DOG

Why does it amuse you to horrify me? You've a certain vanity that I
can't understand. It consists in exaggerating cruelties that are already
real enough. You call me the last of the Romanticists, aren't you the
first of the Sadics?

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

Oh dog, poisoned with literature! An eternal misunderstanding separates
us. "I'm a little bull-dog," you replied just now, with that stupid
sincerity which disarms me. Let me say to you in my turn, "I am a Cat."
The name is sufficient dispensation. There is in me a hatred of pain and
ugliness, an overmastering detestation of all that offends my sight, or
my reason. When the concierge's cat dragged around his wounded paw, I
threw myself upon him, fired by a righteous anger, and until he stopped
his whining I--

TOBY-DOG, (_supplicatingly_)

Don't tell me!

KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (_getting angry_) Understand then, once and for
all--if the pale recital of what I did upsets you--that I wished to
abolish, to annihilate in that bleeding animal the suggestion of my own
inevitable death ...

(_They are quiet for a little while_.)

KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (_shuddering_)

This confinement does us no good. I would gladly go out into the soft
sunshine and do "the bayadeer's dance," as He calls it, on the dry
gravel among the leaves, which look like fried potatoes. Everything is
yellow out-of-doors. My green eyes would reflect the golden sun and the
flaming woods and so turn yellow too.... Now I'll think only of what is
joyous and yellow, the beautiful, cold Autumn, the rosy dawn that leaves
its colors in the foliage of the cherry-tree ... Come, let's prove the
strength of our legs and enjoy to the full the consciousness that youth
has only just begun for us ... Who knows, death may never come ...

(_He jumps down from the console-table, without making the least
noise_.)

TOBY-DOG, (_stopping him_)

What are you going to do?

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

Scratch at the door, and strike up the "Hymn of the Sequestered Cat."

TOBY-DOG, (_indicating the figure on the couch_)

And doubtless waken Her?

KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (_stubbornly_