“Look, upper half of the Centaur,” he said, in the Centaur language; “see how an antelope goes!”
He doubled his legs under him and went off in high, jerky leaps, twice his length every one.
“Look! A buffalo!”
He lumbered along, shoulders low, head handled like a battering-ram, and tail stiff out like a steering-oar.
“Here’s a gray wolf.”
And he shambled forward in a loose-jointed canter, looking back furtively, like a thief, sorry he didn’t stop to steal the other goose, but expecting Stop thief! every minute.
“And so go I, Don Fulano, the Indomitable, a chieftain of the chiefest race below the man,—so go I when walk, pace, gallop, run, leap, career, tread space and time out of being, to show the other half of the Centaurship what my half can do for the love of his.”
“Magnificent!” applauded Biddulph at this display.
“His coquetries are as beautiful as a woman’s,” said Brent. “One whose sweet wiles are nature, not artifice.”
And I—but lately trained to believe that a woman may have the myriad charm of coy withdrawal, and yet not be the traitress youth learns from ancient cynics to fear—accepted the comparison.