No, it was unthinkable. She had best wait until the lions were driven from the encampment below, then slip from her tree and go back to Jotan. Since the day he had won her from Sephar's high priest he had treated her with unfailing courtesy and kindness, declaring over and over his love for her but not once attempting to force his attentions upon her. After a little while she might allow herself to be won over into accepting him as her mate. It would be an honored, sheltered life and in time she might know complete happiness. Dylara was shaking her head even as these last thoughts were crowding in. No. Her place was with her own kind, with Majok and the others. It was a long, long way back to them and in the attempt she might leave her bones to bleach on some mountain top or disappear down the maw of one of the great cats. But there was no other acceptable choice--and no time like the present to get started. Carefully she began to work her way into the jungle, moving cautiously far out on a strong limb until she was able to clamber into the branches of the next tree. The curtain of greenery was too thick for the light of moon or stars to penetrate, leaving her to grope her way in utter darkness. Each vine she scraped against was pictured in her mind as the sinuous coils of Sleeza, the snake; each fluttering of a disturbed bird was an aroused panther or leopard. She was not going on this way much farther; her nerves, steady as they were, could not take much of such suspense. Only deep enough into the jungle to keep the inexperienced Ammadians from following her trail; with the coming of Dyta, the sun, she would locate a game trail pointing in the direction she wished to go, then descend to the ground and follow it. An hour later her trembling limbs refused to continue this inch-by-inch progress. And so Dylara made her way toward the high flung branches of a forest patriarch to where Jalok, the panther, and Tarlok, the leopard, dare not go. Here the foliage was less compact and Uda's pale beams displayed to her rapt eyes an endless sea of tree tops everywhere about her. Finding a comfortable fork fully a hundred feet above the jungle floor, Dylara composed herself to wait the coming of dawn. Finally she drifted off to sleep, while far below a lion roared that he had made his kill and filled his belly for the night. And not long after, a jungle dweller, swinging swiftly through the trees, came to a sudden halt on a swaying branch as a vagrant breeze brought the scent of her to its quivering nostrils. For a full minute it remained motionless as if carved from stone, then it turned sharply aside and went on, fairly flying along the dizzy pathway of swaying boughs, following that scent spoor to its source. * * * * *