There could be no
mistaking the feline presence. Now with a sudden energy of the body, she
threw the Thing from her, and heard it drop, with the softness of feline
feet, on the Indian rug upon the floor.
Then she sprang out of bed, and, feeling for the matches, lit a candle on
the small table beside her bed, and moved it round searching for what she
thought to be a cat. It was not to be seen. She looked under the bed;
it was not there: under the washstand, under the chest of drawers, under
the improvised dressing-table; and no cat was to be found. She 173
looked under the chair over which hung her clothes, even behind the
dresses and the Indian deerskin cape hanging on the door.
There was no life of any kind save her own in the room, so far as she
could see. She laughed nervously, though her heart was still beating
hard. That it should beat hard was absurd, for what had she to fear--she
who had lived the wild open-air life of many lands, had slept among hills
infested by animals the enemy of man, and who when a little girl had
faced beasts of prey alone. Yet here in her own safe room on the
Sagalac, with its four walls, but its unlocked doors--for Gabriel Druse
said that he could not bear that last sign of his exile--here in the
fortress of the town-dweller there was a strange trembling of her pulses
in the presence of a mere hallucination or nightmare--the first she had
had ever.
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