Like a dog guided by scent in the circle of a chase.
Her paw was colored with blood,
In the middle of the road she lay like a tiger;
Impelled either by wild instinct or necessity,
She had made her own whelp the aliment of life.
At the sight of so strange a scene,
I restrained my hand from striking, and opening my lips,
I said: ‘O dog, what desirest thou to do?
Upon thy own heart why inflicting all this pain?’
Scarce had the tip of my tongue perforated the pearl of the secret,