GUINEVERE THE MYSTERIOUS 141 



iridescent silvery blue. The eye proper was sil- 

 very white, but the upper part of the eyeball 

 fairly glowed with color. In front it was jet 

 black flecked with gold, merging behind into a 

 brilliant blue. Yet this patch of jeweled tissue 

 was visible only rarely as the tadpole turned for- 

 ward, and in the opaque liquid of the mica pool 

 must have ever been hidden. And even if plainly 

 seen, of what use was a shred of rainbow to a 

 sexless tadpole in the depths of a shady pool! 



With high-arched fins, beginning at neck and 

 throat, body compressed as in a racing yacht, 

 there could be no bottom life for Guinevere. 

 Whenever she touched a horizontal surface, — 

 whether leaf or twig, — she careened; when she 

 sculled through a narrow passage in the floating 

 alga}, her fins bent and rippled as they were 

 pressed bodywards. So she and her fellow brood 

 lived in mid-aquarium, or at most rested lightly 

 against stem or glass, suspended by gentle suc- 

 tion of the complex mouth. Once, when I in- 

 serted a long streamer of delicate water-weed, it 

 remained upright, like some strange tree of car- 

 boniferous memory. After an hour I found this 

 the perching-place of fourteen Redfin tads, and 

 at the very summit was Guinevere. The rest 



