GUINEVERE THE MYSTERIOUS 147 
compelled a vivid thought of the sphinx. Never 
have I seen such a remarkable combination. It 
fascinated us. We looked at Guinevere, and 
then at the tadpoles swimming quietly in their 
tank, and evolution in its wildest conceptions ap- 
peared a tame truism. 
This was the acme of Guinevere’s change, the 
pinnacle of her development. Thereafter her 
transformations were rhythmical, alternating 
with the day and night. Through the nights of 
activity she was garbed in rich, warm brown. 
With the coming of dawn, as she climbed slowly 
upward, her color shifted through chestnut to 
maroon; this maroon then died out on the mid- 
back to a delicate, dull violet-blue, which in turn 
became obscured in the sunlight by turquoise, 
which crept slowly along the sides. Carefully 
and laboriously she clambered up, up to the top- 
most frond, and there performed her little toilet, 
scraping head and face with her hands, passing 
the hinder limbs over her back to brush off every 
grain of sand- The eyes had meanwhile lost their 
black-flecked. golden, nocturnal iridescence, and 
had gradually paled to a clear silvery blue, while 
the great pupil of darkness narrowed to a slit. 
Little by little her limbs and digits were drawn; 
