Gerald blinked. He was a bit troubled by the matter-of-fact occurrence before his eyes of a perfectly incredible happening. For the elder lady became transfigured. She became larger, all ruddiness went away from her, and she took on the black and livid coloring of a thunder cloud. In her left hand she now carried a pair of scales and a yardstick. Her face smiled rather terribly as she steadily grew larger. Her necklace, you perceived, was made of human skulls, and each of her earrings was the dangling corpse of a hanged man in a very poor state of preservation. Altogether, it was not a grief to Gerald when the Mother of Every Princess had attained to her full heavenly stature, and had vanished. But the Lady of the Water-Gap was changed in quite another fashion. Where she had stood now fluttered a large black and yellow butterfly. 9. How One Butterfly Fared SO it was in the shape of a large butterfly that Evasherah returned toward Gerald, to careen and drift affectionately about him, in a bewildering medley of bright colors. He cried to her adoringly, “My darling—!” He grasped at her: and she did not avoid him. Gerald now held this lovely creature, by the throat, at arm’s length. He began the compelling words, “Schemhamphoras—” And in Gerald’s face was no adoration whatever. Instead, he continued, rather sadly, “—Eloha, Ab, Bar, Ruachaccocies—” and so went through the entire awful list, ending by and by with “Cados.” His prey was now struggling frantically. The unreflective girl had not allowed for her lover’s being a student of magic. And her restiveness was—well, it might be, pardonably,—a bit interfering with Gerald’s æsthetic delight, now that he paused to admire the splendor of the trapped Princess’s last incarnation, before he used the fatal Hausa charm. For Evasherah’s wings were of a wonderful velvety black and a fiery orange color, her body was golden, and her breast crimson. He noted also that Evasherah, in her increasing agitation of mind, had thrust out from the back of her neck a soft forked horn which diffused a horrible odor. And those curved, strong, needle-sharp fangs which were striking vainly at him were so adroitly designed that Gerald fell now to marveling, still a little sadly, at their superb efficiency. A yellowish oil oozed from their tips. They had, he saw, just the curve of two cat claws: whensoever such fangs struck flesh, their victim’s recoil would but clamp fangs which were shaped like that more deeply and more venomously; it was a quite ingenious arrangement. It perfectly explained, too, how the visitors of this soft-spoken, cuddling and utterly adorable Princess happened to leave their skulls in the thick grass around her alabaster couch.