according to the laws of her being."

Lastly, he said to himself what was, he felt, the truth of this whole
matter:

"When I am with her I am happy. But now I distort what is simple and
drive myself crazy with false reasoning upon it."

Yet before he slept again he prayed, but though he had thought first to
pray for guidance, in reality he prayed only that on the morrow he would
see his vixen again and that God would preserve her, and her cubs too,
from all dangers, and would allow him to see them often, so that he
might come to love them for her sake as if he were their father, and
that if this were a sin he might be forgiven, for he sinned in
ignorance. The next day or two he saw vixen and cubs again, though his
visits were cut shorter, and these visits gave him such an innocent
pleasure that very soon his notions of honour, duty and so on, were
entirely forgotten, and his jealousy lulled asleep.

One day he tried taking with him the stereoscope and a pack of cards.

But though his Silvia was affectionate and amiable enough to let him put
the stereoscope over her muzzle, yet she would not look through it, but
kept turning her head to lick his hand, and it was plain to him that now
she had quite forgotten the use of the instrument. It was the same too
with the cards. For with them she was pleased enough, but only
delighting to bite at them, and flip them about with her paws, and never
considering for a moment whether they were diamonds or clubs, or hearts,
or spades or whether the card was an ace or not. So it was evident that
she had forgotten the nature of cards too.