I carried her upstairs, threw her upon the floor and locked the door. I seized the poker beside the door and turned to slay her. Toi Wah lay where I had thrown her, crouched as if to spring, but she did not move. She only looked at me.
I did not fear her now. On my hands were heavy gauntlets, and about my throat was the heavy leather guard I had made, bradded and studded with steel and brass.
Toi Wah did not move. She only looked, but such a look! It appealed to the merciless devil in my heart. It burned into my soul.
"Kill me!" her great amber eyes seemed to say. "Kill me quickly and mercifully as you killed the darling of my heart. What sayeth the Master: 'Be merciful, and thy heart shall know peace.' Today is yours, tomorrow—Who can say?"
As if in a dream, I stood and looked into her eyes. Looked until those amber eyes converged into a dirty yellow pool around the edge of which grew giant ferns and reeds taller than our forest rees. And a misty haze hung over the scene.
Into the pool floated a canoe, a hollowed-out tree trunk. In the canoe was a man, a woman, and a child, all naked except for skins about their shoulders. The man pushed toward the shore with a pole, and as he made a landing he leaped into the water and pulled the boat upon the bank.
As he pulled at the boat, the reeds quivered to the right of him, and a great yellow-colored tiger leaped from the cover of the ferns and seized the child.
For a moment it stood there, the man and woman paralyzed by fear and horror. Then, blood dripping from its jaws, it leaped back among the reeds and was gone.
The face of the man in the boat was mine! And it was Toi Wah who held my child in her dripping jaws! A great Toi Wah, with sabre teeth and dirty yellow hide, but still Toi Wah.
The pool faded and I stood there, looking into the eyes of my grandmother's Tartar cat.
But I knew! At last I knew!
IV.
Explain it how you will, I knew that somewhere far that prehistoric time, Toi Wah had snatched away my first-born before my tortured eyes and that his tender flesh had filled a sabre-toothed tiger's maw.
Now had come the day of my revenge! I clutched the poker more firmly in my hands. I stood and seized her by the collar that none of us had been able to unfasten. It came off in my hand!
Wonderingly, I looked at it, then cast it aside, to think no more of the curious antique until. . . .
I was in haste to rid myself of this thing of hate and dread. My heart leaped. I ground my teeth in an ecstasy of joy; my cheeks burned. A feeling of well-being and power made my whole body glow. . . .
I left her there, at last, on the blood- stained floor, a broken dead thing, and went out and locked the door after me.
I was free at last! Free from the fear of claws and teeth in my quivering throat. Free from the sound of softly-padding feet. I was a new man, indeed, for there sloughed from me all the old timidity and lack of aggressiveness that this fear of Toi Wah had engendered in me. I went from my grandmother's house to college, a man among men. . . .
I did not return again to the house of my inheritance until I brought my bride—a shy, soft, fluffy little thing a lovely contrast to the aggressive type of modern woman.
She was an old-world Eastern type, the daughter of a returned Chinese missionary, educated in the Orient, and she had the manners and had absorbed the ideals of the soft-voiced, secluded, home-loving Chinese women among whom she had been reared.
Her light brown eyes and yellow hair, her slow, undulating graceful walk, and her quaint old-fashioned ways attracted me; and after a short, impetuous wooing we were wed.
I was very happy. Only twenty-four, wealthy, and married to a loving and beautiful girl whom I adored!
I looked forward to a long life of peace and happiness, but it was not to be. From the very day of my return to the accursed house of my grandmother there was a change. What was it? I do not know, but I could feel it. I could sense it, the very first day. A subtle something, a pall gloom, intangible, elusive and baffling, began slowly to settle over me, stifling and suffocating the happiness that was mine before the evil day of my return home.
I had returned from the village with some trifle of household necessity. The servants had not yet arrived, and the housekeeper, old and infirm now, was busy putting the place in order.
Returning, I sought my wife, and found her in my grandmother's room, standing before the life-size portrait of Toi Wah, done in oil for my grandmother by a great artist, who also loved cats as she had loved them.
Until that day Toi Wah had remained only a dim memory of a fear-driven boy's cruel revenge. Purposely, I had put all thought of her out of my mind. But now it all returned, a horde of hateful memories, as I stood there in the open door and saw my wife standing and gazing up at the likeness of the great cat.
And as she turned, startled at my entrance, what did I see?
I saw, or thought I saw, a likeness, a great likeness, between the two! Eyes, hair, the general expression—Why had I not noticed it before!
And what else? In my wife's eyes was the old fear, the ancient hate, I used to see in Toi Wah's eyes when I came suddenly into my grandmother's room—this room! The look flashed out for an instant and was gone.
"How you frightened me, Robert!" she laughed. "And the look in your face! What has happened?"
"Nothing," I answered. "Nothing at all."
"But why did you look at me so?" she insisted. "Surely something has gone amiss. Aren't the servants coming? If they are not, I am not entirely useless; I can even cook," and she laughed again, an embarrassed laugh I thought.
She had the manner of having been surprised by my entrance, of being detected in something, secret or hidden, which she was now trying to cover up and conceal.
"Why," I stammered confusedly, for this remarkable resemblance had thrown me quite off my feet, "nothing is wrong. Only I was suddenly struck, as you stood there by the portrait of my grandmother's cat, by the remarkable resemblance; your hair, your eyes—the same color. That was all."
"Why, Robert!" she laughed, holding up an admonishing finger.
This time I was sure of the note of confusion in her laugh, which seemed forced. My wife was not given to laughter, being a quiet, self-contained sort of person.
"Imagine! I, like a cat!"
"Well," I said lightly, gathering her in my arms—for I, too, was dissembling, now that I had regained my self-possession and saw that I was betraying my secret fear—"Toi Wah was a very beautiful and high-bred cat. Her ancestry dated back to Ghengis Khan. So to resemble her would not be so bad, would it?" And I kissed her.
Did she shrink from the caress? Did her body tremble in my arms? Or was it imagination, the stirring of old memories of Toi Wah, who shrank from my lightest touch?
