During eleven months of every year it would have been possible---
although I considered it undesirable--for her to have appeared in
public unveiled. She possessed features of perfect _Ancient Egyptian
regularity_. I emphasize the point. Her eyes, during the day, were
those of a handsome native woman--almond-shaped and of a wonderful
amber color. At night they appeared green.

Of her fingers, toes, and the peculiar formation of certain teeth I
have spoken at length (_another reference to a deleted passage_). I
will deal, now, with those manifestations which proclaimed themselves
during the Sothic month of each year formerly associated with the
Feast of Bast.

At such times, which I always dreaded, and with good cause, her innate
love of admiration became so excessive as to approach nearly to mania.
She hungered for homage, for praise--I had almost said for adoration.

What I may term, for convenience, the _psychic_ side of her hybrid
mentality at these periods undoubtedly bordered closely upon true
insanity; and learning from the Eurasian nurse to whom I have referred
the whole history of her birth, my charge, to whom I had given the
name of Nahemah (students will recognize its significance), began to
display even more marked evidence of a sort of monomania. Bast, the
cat-goddess, became an obsession with her, and she finally conceived
the idea that the attributes of that mystical and partly-understood
deity were active within her; that she was Bast, re-born. And,
certainly, during one month of every year, her condition closely
resembled that which was termed in the Middle Ages "possession."

At such times, moreover (a phenomenon with which I have dealt at
length in my work on the subject), she evinced an antipathy towards
the whole of the _canine_ species which was reciprocated in a singular
way. Thus, when, contrary to my express orders, she has wandered
abroad during the Sothic period, I have been enabled to trace her
movements by the progressive howling of dogs.

Since I had enjoined the nurse to be silent upon all things bearing
upon Nahemah's birth, I was enraged at this breach of faith and sent
the woman away. But a new situation had been created which I found
myself called upon immediately to face.

Nahemah demanded news of her family. As I have made sufficiently
evident, it was often difficult, if not impossible, to thwart the
desires of my protegee. To condense into a few words a matter which
occasio