"What do you say, Mahatma? A man! One of those two-legged beasts that
hunt hares; a thing like Giles and Tom--yes, Tom? Oh! not that--not
that! I'd almost rather go through everything again than become a cruel,
torturing man."

As it spoke thus the Hare grew so disturbed that it nearly vanished;
literally it seemed to melt away till I could only perceive its outline.
With a kind of shock I comprehended all the horror that it must feel at
such a prospect as I had suggested to it, and really this grasping of
the truth hurt my human pride. It had never come home to me before that
the circumstances of their lives--and deaths--must cause some creatures
to see us in strange lights.

"Oh! I have no doubt I was mistaken," I said hurriedly, "and that your
wishes on the point will be respected. I told you that I know nothing."

At these words the Hare became quite visible again.

It sat up and very reflectively began to rub its still shadowy nose with
a shadowy paw. I think that it remembered the sting of the salt water in
the cut made by the glass of the window through which it had sprung.

Believing that its remarkable story was done, and that presently it
would altogether melt away and vanish out of my knowledge, I looked
about me. First I looked above the towering Gates to see whether the
Lights had yet begun to change. Then as they had not I looked down the
Great White Road, following it for miles and miles, until even to my
spirit sight it lost itself in the Nowhere.