Under a canopied platform stood a young girl, modeling in clay. The
glare of the California sunshine, filtering through the canvas, became
mellowed, warm and golden. Above the girl's head--yellow like the
stalk of wheat--there hovered a kind of aureola, as if there had risen
above it a haze of impalpable gold dust.
A poet I know might have cried out that here ended his quest of the
Golden Girl. Straight she stood at this moment, lovely of face,
rounded of form, with an indescribable suggestion of latent physical
power or magnetism. On her temples there were little daubs of clay,
caused doubtless by impatient fingers sweeping back occasional wind
blown locks of hair. There was even a daub on the side of her handsome
sensitive nose.
Her hand, still filled with clay, dropped to her side, and a tableau
endured for a minute or two, suggesting a remote period, a Persian
idyl, mayhap. With a smile on her lips she stared at the living model.
The chatoyant eyes of the leopard stared back, a flicker of
restlessness in their brilliant yellow deeps. The tip of the tail
twitched.
"You beautiful thing!" she said.
She began kneading the clay again, and with deft fingers added bits
here and there to the creature which had grown up under her strong
supple fingers.
"Kathlyn! Oh, Kit!"
The sculptress paused, the pucker left her brow, and she turned, her
face beaming, for her sister Winnie was the apple of her eye, and she
brooded over her as the mother would have done had the mother lived.
For Winnie, dark as Kathlyn was light, was as careless and aimless as
thistledown in the wind.
A collie leaped upon the platform and began pawing Kathlyn, and shortly
after the younger sister followed. Neither of the girls noted the
stiffening mustaches of the leopard. The animal rose, and his nostrils
palpitated. He hated the dog with a hatred not unmixed with fear.
Treachery is in the marrow of all cats. To breed them in captivity
does not matter. Sooner or later they will strike. Never before had
the leopard been so close to his enemy, free of the leash.
"Kit, it is just wonderful. However can you do it? Some day we'll
make dad take us to Paris, where you can exhibit them."
A snarl from the leopard, answered by a growl from the collie, brought
Kathlyn's head about. The cat leaped, but toward Winnie, not the
collie. With a cry of terror Winnie turned and ran in the direction of
the bungalow. Kathlyn, seizing the leash, followed like the wind,
hampered though she was by the apron. The cat loped after the fleeing
girl, gaining at each bound. The yelping of the collie brought forth
from various points low rumbling sounds, which presently developed into
roars.