her eyes fixed upon him, and held out his arms to her and said:

"Oh Silvia, Silvia, would you had never done this! Would I had never
tempted you in a fatal hour! Does not this butchery and eating of raw
meat and rabbit's fur disgust you? Are you a monster in your soul as
well as in your body? Have you forgotten what it is to be a woman?"

Meanwhile, with every word of his, she crawled a step nearer on her
belly and at last climbed sorrowfully into his arms. His words then
seemed to take effect on her and her eyes filled with tears and she wept
most penitently in his arms, and her body shook with her sobs as if her
heart were breaking. This sorrow of hers gave him the strangest mixture
of pain and joy that he had ever known, for his love for her returning
with a rush, he could not bear to witness her pain and yet must take
pleasure in it as it fed his hopes of her one day returning to be a
woman. So the more anguish of shame his vixen underwent, the greater his
hopes rose, till his love and pity for her increasing equally, he was
almost wishing her to be nothing more than a mere fox than to suffer so
much by being half-human.

At last he looked about him somewhat dazed with so much weeping, then
set his vixen down on the ottoman, and began to clean up the room with a
heavy heart. He fetched a pail of water and washed out all the stains of
blood, gathered up the two antimacassars and fetched clean ones from the
other rooms. While he went about this work his vixen sat and watched him
very contritely with her nose between her two front paws, and when he
had done he brought in some luncheon for himself, though it was already
late, but none for her, she having lately so infamously feasted. But
water he gave her and a bunch of grapes. Afterwards she led him to the
small tortoiseshell cabinet and would have him open it. When he had done
so she motioned to the portable stereoscope which lay inside. Mr.
Tebrick instantly fell in with her wish and after a few trials adjusted
it to her vision. Thus they spent the rest of the afternoon together
very happily looking through the collection of views which he had
purchased, of Italy, Spain and Scotland. This diversion gave her great
apparent pleasure and afforded him considerable comfort. But that night
he could not prevail upon her to sleep in bed with him, and finally
allowed her to sleep on a mat beside the bed where he could stretch down
and touch her. So they passed the night, wi