many moons ago , when she had been much smaller , she had desired the skin of sabora , the lioness , or numa , the lion , or sheeta , the leopard to cover her hairless body that she might no longer resemble hideous histah , the snake ; but now she was proud of her sleek skin for it betokened her descent from a mighty race , and the conflicting desires to go naked in prideful proof of her ancestry , or to conform to the customs of her own kind and wear hideous and uncomfortable apparel found first one and then the other in the ascendency .