'How little notice you take of these brilliant bushes of flowers, St. Charity!'
'Oh, the petunias and rhodanthes! Well, most of them are so hard and scentless. With a cunning pair of scissors, wire, and a few sheets of French-coloured paper, one might turn out basketfuls of these you would hardly know from the originals.'
'Now, how can you urge that as an objection when you love the native "immortelle" so dearly?'
'But don't you see the difference between flowers so much cared for and cultivated, and those that spring up in sandy deserts? Flowers in gardens are the Hebrews, with prophets and leaders and angelic visitations. But when Marcus Aurelius says, "If there are no gods it is ill to live; if there are gods, it is well to die"—that is an everlasting in the desert.'
'I humbly crave pardon for my foolish objection. Yet I am glad I made it, for the sake of your answer.'
'This is our spider-web!' said Stella, pausing by the hawthorn-bush. 'See what a delicate tracery of silk and light it is, with a cloud-like little woof in the centre. Now, is that to turn into the spiders of the future?'
'Yes, I imagine so, when the time is fulfilled,' said Langdale, looking at the web with grave attention. 'Who bent this spray, and fastened it so as to protect the web?'
'I did. You see, this tiny hammock—the most exquisite baby-cradle of nature—looked so forlornly exposed to all the caprices of fate: the wind, and insects, and fowls of the air.'
'Yes; we all live at each other's cost, whether we dwell in palaces or the crevices of a tree's bark; but the spider has a sterner struggle than most: he hangs perpetually in suspense, unless St. Charity devises schemes to protect him. But why does she watch this little cocoon with so much interest?'
'I have an incredible curiosity to see one or more infant spiders of unblemished life, "ere sin could blight or sorrow fade"—even before they have tasted the blood of a fly. It is a sorrowful thought that though I have seen so many thousand spiders, I have never seen an innocent one!'