Not once did she lose her hold on the neck of the other.

From the spotted throat at length issued a howl of agony, changing, by swift-crowded gradations, into the long-drawn CRESCENDO of a woman's uttermost wail.

The white one relaxed her jaws; the spotted one drew herself away, and rose on her hind legs.
Erect in the moonlight stood the princess, a confused rush of shadows careering over her whiteness--the spots of the leopard crowding, hurrying, fleeing to the refuge of her eyes, where merging they vanished.

The last few, outsped and belated, mingled with the cloud of her streamy hair, leaving her radiant as the moon when a legion of little vapours has flown, wind-hunted, off her silvery disc--save that, adown the white column of her throat, a thread of blood still trickled from every wound of her adversary's terrible teeth.

She turned away, took a few steps with the gait of a Hecate, fell, covered afresh with her spots, and fled at a long, stretching gallop.
The white leopardess turned also, sprang upon me, pulled my arms asunder, caught the baby as it fell, and flew with it along the street toward the gate..