GUINEVERE THE MYSTERIOUS 145 
mighty gulp of the strange thin medium that cov- 
ered the surface of her liquid home. 
At midnight of this same day only three things 
existed in the world—on my table I turned from 
the Bhagavad-Gita to Drinkwater’s Reverie and 
back again; then I looked up to the jar of clear 
water and watched Guinevere hovering motion- 
less. At six the next morning she was crouched 
safely on a bit of paper a foot from the aqua- 
rium. She had missed the open window, the 
four-foot drop to the floor, and a neighboring 
aquarium stocked with voracious fish: surely the 
gods of pollywogs were kind to me. [The great 
fins were gone—dissolved into blobs of dull pink; 
the tail was a mere stub, the feet drawn close, 
and a glance at her head showed that Guinevere 
had become a frog almost within an hour. Three 
things I hastened to observe: the pupils of her 
eyes were vertical, revealing her genus Phyllo- 
medusa (making apt our choice of the feminine) ; 
by a gentle urging I saw that the first and sec- 
ond toes were equal in length; and a glance at 
her little humped back showed a scattering of 
white calcareous spots, giving the clue to her 
specific personality—bicolor: thus were we in- 
troduced to Phyllomedusa bicolor, alias Guine- 
