beast but with
a woman's soul. This encouraged him so much that he debated with himself
whether he should not read aloud to her, as he often had done formerly.
At last, since he could find no reason against it, he went to the shelf
and fetched down a volume of the "History of Clarissa Harlowe," which he
had begun to read aloud to her a few weeks before. He opened the volume
where he had left off, with Lovelace's letter after he had spent the
night waiting fruitlessly in the copse.

"Good God!

"What is now to become of me?

"My feet benumbed by midnight wanderings through the heaviest dews
that ever fell; my wig and my linen dripping with the hoarfrost
dissolving on them!

"Day but just breaking...." etc.

While he read he was conscious of holding her attention, then after a
few pages the story claimed all his, so that he read on for about
half-an-hour without looking at her. When he did so he saw that she was
not listening to him, but was watching something with strange eagerness.
Such a fixed intent look was on her face that he was alarmed and sought
the cause of it. Presently he found that her gaze was fixed on the
movements of her pet dove which was in its cage hanging in the window.
He spoke to her, but she seemed displeased, so he laid "Clarissa
Harlowe" aside. Nor did he ever repeat the experiment of reading to her.

Yet that same evening, as he happened to be looking through his writing
table drawer with Puss beside him looking over his elbow, she spied a
pack of cards, and then he was forced to pick them out to please her,
then draw them from their case. At last, trying first one thing, then
another, he found that what she was after was to play piquet with him.
They had some difficulty at first in contriving for her to hold her
cards and then to play them, but this was at last overcome by his
stacking them for her on a sloping board, after which she could flip
them out very neatly with her claws as she wanted to play them. When
they had overcome this trouble they played three games, and most
heartily she seemed to enjoy them. Moreover she won all three of them.
After this they often played a quiet game of piquet together, and
cribbage too. I should say that in marking the points at cribbage on the
board he always moved her pegs for her as well as his own, for she could
not handle them or set them in the holes.

The weather, which had been damp and misty, with frequent downpours of