with pupil indistinguishable from iris. The effect upon me was of black, vivid black, unintelligent eyes—which see intensely but cannot translate. His hair was dense and rather long. It covered his ears and touched his shoulders. It was pushed from his forehead sideways in a thick, in a solid fold, as[24] if it had been the corner of a frieze cape thrown back. It was dark hair, but not black; his neck was very thin. I don't know how he was dressed—I never noticed such things; but in colour he must have been inconspicuous, since I had been looking at him for a good time without seeing him at all. A sleeveless tunic, I think, which may have been brown, or grey, or silver-white. I don't know. But his knees were bare—that I remember; and his arms were bare from the shoulder. [24] I standing, he squatting on his heels, the pair of us looked full at one another. I was not frightened, no more was he. I was excited, and full of interest; so, I think, was he. My heart beat double time. Then I saw, with a curious excitement, that between his knees he held a rabbit, and that with his left hand he had it by the throat. Now, what is extraordinary to me about this discovery is that there was nothing shocking in it. I saw the rabbit's wild and panic-blown eye, I saw the bright white rim of it, and recognised its little added terror of me even in the midst of its anguish. That must have been the conventional fright of a beast of chase, an instinct to fear rather than an emotion; for of emotions the poor thing must have been having its fill. It was not till I saw its mouth horribly open, its lips curled back to show[25] its shelving teeth that I could have guessed at what it was suffering. But gradually I apprehended what was being done. Its captor was squeezing its throat. I saw what I had never seen before, and have never seen since, I saw its tongue like a pale pink petal of a flower dart out as the pressure drove it. Revolting sight as that would have been to me, witnessed in the world, here, in this dark wood, in this outland presence, it was nothing but curious. Now, as I watched and wondered, the being, following my eyes' direction, looked down at the huddled thing between his thighs, and just as children squeeze a snap-dragon flower to make it open and shut its mouth, so precisely did he, pressing or releasing the windpipe, cause that poor beast to throw back its lips and dart its dry tongue. He did this many times while he watched it; and when he looked up at me again, and while he continued to look at me, I saw that his cruel fingers, as by habit, continued the torture, and that in some way he derived
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