getting his gun, to have shot himself and his vixen too. Indeed the
extremity of his grief was such that it served him a very good turn, for
he was so entirely unmanned by it that for some time he could do nothing
but weep, and fell into a chair with his head in his hands, and so kept
weeping and groaning.

After he had been some little while employed in this dismal way, his
vixen, who had by this time bolted down the rabbit skin, head, ears and
all, came to him and putting her paws on his knees, thrust her long
muzzle into his face and began licking him. But he, looking at her now
with different eyes, and seeing her jaws still sprinkled with fresh
blood and her claws full of the rabbit's fleck, would have none of it.

But though he beat her off four or five times even to giving her blows
and kicks, she still came back to him, crawling on her belly and
imploring his forgiveness with wide-open sorrowful eyes. Before he had
made this rash experiment of the rabbit and the flowers, he had promised
himself that if she failed in it he would have no more feeling or
compassion for her than if she were in truth a wild vixen out of the
woods. This resolution, though the reasons for it had seemed to him so
very plain before, he now found more difficult to carry out than to
decide on. At length after cursing her and beating her off for upwards
of half-an-hour, he admitted to himself that he still did care for her,
and even loved her dearly in spite of all, whatever pretence he affected
towards her. When he had acknowledged this he looked up at her and met
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