Again the cat looked up at him for a brief second, and then continued
its sentry-walk, blissfully happy, intensely preoccupied. And, for an
instant, as he watched it, the doctor was aware that a faint uneasiness
stirred in the depths of his own being, focusing itself for the moment
upon this curious behaviour of the uncanny creature before him.

There rose in him quite a new realisation of the mystery connected with
the whole feline tribe, but especially with that common member of it,
the domestic cat--their hidden lives, their strange aloofness, their
incalculable subtlety. How utterly remote from anything that human
beings understood lay the sources of their elusive activities. As he
watched the indescribable bearing of the little creature mincing along
the strip of carpet under his eyes, coquetting with the powers of
darkness, welcoming, maybe, some fearsome visitor, there stirred in his
heart a feeling strangely akin to awe. Its indifference to human kind,
its serene superiority to the obvious, struck him forcibly with fresh
meaning; so remote, so inaccessible seemed the secret purposes of its
real life, so alien to the blundering honesty of other animals. Its
absolute poise of bearing brought into his mind the opium-eater's words
that "no dignity is perfect which does not at some point ally itself
with the mysterious"; and he became suddenly aware that the presence of
the dog in this foggy, haunted room on the top of Putney Hill was
uncommonly welcome to him. He was glad to feel that Flame's dependable
personality was with him. The savage growling at his heels was a
pleasant sound. He was glad to hear it. That marching cat made him
uneasy.

Finding that Smoke paid no further attention to his words, the doctor
decided upon action. Would it rub against his leg, too? He would take it