pace or two, and he saw at once that his wife was looking at him from
the animal's eyes. You may well think if he were aghast: and so maybe
was his lady at finding herself in that shape, so they did nothing for
nearly half-an-hour but stare at each other, he bewildered, she asking
him with her eyes as if indeed she spoke to him: "What am I now become?
Have pity on me, husband, have pity on me for I am your wife."

So that with his gazing on her and knowing her well, even in such a
shape, yet asking himself at every moment: "Can it be she? Am I not
dreaming?" and her beseeching and lastly fawning on him and seeming to
tell him that it was she indeed, they came at last together and he took
her in his arms. She lay very close to him, nestling under his coat and
fell to licking his face, but never taking her eyes from his. The
husband all this while kept turning the thing in his head and gazing on
her, but he could make no sense of what had happened, but only comforted
himself with the hope that this was but a momentary change, and that
presently she would turn back again into the wife that was one flesh
with him.

One fancy that came to him, because he was so much more like a lover
than a husband, was that it was his fault, and this because if anything
dreadful happened he could never blame her but himself for it.

So they passed a good while, till at last the tears welled up in the
poor fox's eyes and she began weeping (but quite in silence), and she
trembled too as if she were in a fever. At this he could not contain his
own tears, but sat down on the ground and sobbed for a great while, but
between his sobs kissing her quite as if she had been a woman, and not
caring in his grief that he was kissing a fox on the muzzle.