She played with me as she had often played before, all her claws sheathed and her paws soft as thistledown; mumbling my hands and forearms in her hot mouth, slavering over them, yet never so much as bruising the skin with her needle-sharp teeth.

Yet I seemed to detect a subtle difference in her mood and, from moment to moment, dreaded that she might claw me to ribbons or sink her fangs in my shoulders or face.
All the while she was mouthing, pawing and kicking me I was raging at Agathemer for having put me in a position where I had to make so undignified an exhibition of myself before such an assemblage.
Presently I recognized that alteration in her mood which made it possible for me to rise, take her by the scruff of the neck, and lead her off to her cage.
When I had her inside I realized how hot, sweaty, dusty tousled, rumpled and mussed I was.

Her cage was under the vaulted arcade beneath the second terrace.

I was, when I shot its bolts, altogether out of sight of Vedia, Nemestronia and the other noble ladies who had been spectators of my tussle with the leopard.

I did not want them to see me again in my dishevelled and dirty condition: I sneaked into the house by the passage from the arcade into the cellars and up the scullery stairs, made the first slave I saw escort me to the guest-room I usually occupied when at Nemestronia's and bade him summon bath-attendants and dressers.
Nemestronia had a store-room lined with wardrobes of men's attire containing every sort of garment of every style and size.