Fido was a daily, hourly delight.
I would shut my eyes, to be able to open them suddenly and realise—with fresh acuteness—his infinite variety. There was to me something poignant about his loveliness like an open rose in whose very perfection lies the herald of doom. I loved him too much. The cynical masterpieces of the past looking at his beauty smiled in satisfied revenge for they knew that he was alive and that life means death. Love gives mortality to everything.
Fido grew limp and listless. His nose was hot and dry. He no longer trotted about, he wandered from room to room. His eyes were dull. His heart bumped about like money in a money-box. With an effort he wagged his tail to cheer me up. Wearily he would climb into a chair and lie there indifferent to my trembling caresses.
Fido died.
I gave up looking at dogs, alive or china, embroidered or painted. Fortunately most of my friends have "pets," griffons that look like tropical spiders, little shiny naked shivering animals, bloated prosperous Pekineses, exuding the complacency of their mistresses and seeming to be rather the last word of a dressmaker, or a furrier, than a creation of the Gods.
If I saw a sheepdog, or a greyhound, a spaniel or a retriever, I would avert my eyes, shivering a little as when the hitherto harmless buzzing machine reaches the hidden nerve.
"Don't you like dogs?" people would say.
LIKE!
"No!" I would answer.