The youngest cried, “Mother” ... and threw out his little arms.
She said, “I have grown too cold to weep any more.”
With that she came back to her husband. “Farewell,” she said. “Even now I cannot kill you for my little children’s sakes. Guard them well.”
The man lifted up his eyes and saw her. White was her face and beautiful; white were her trailing garments; her hair was white as it were with snow that had fallen upon it. Her breath was quite plainly to be seen as it came from her parted lips. It was like a fair white smoke.
“Farewell! Farewell!” she cried, and her voice grew thin and chill like a piercing winter wind. Her form grew vague as a snow wreath or a white vaporous cloud. For an instant it hung upon the air. Then it rose slowly through the smoke-hole in the ceiling and was no more seen.
XX
THE FIRE QUEST
The Wise Poet sat reading by the light of his taper. It was a night of the seventh month. The cicala sang in the flower of the pomegranate, the frog sang by the pond. The moon was out and all the stars, the air was heavy and sweet-scented. But the Poet was not happy, for moths came by the score to the light of his taper; not moths only, but cockchafers and dragon-flies with their wings rainbow-tinted. One and all they came upon the Fire Quest; one and all they burned their bright wings in the flame and so died. And the Poet was grieved.
“Little harmless children of the night,” he said, “why will you still fly upon the Fire Quest? Never, never can you attain, yet you strive and die. Foolish ones, have you never heard the story of the Firefly Queen?”
The moths and the cockchafers and the dragon-flies fluttered about the taper and paid him no heed.