"I am the queen."
Immediately and strangely she adds, as though troubled by some foreboding:
"Don't take my illusion away from me."
I was on the point of answering her, but I check myself, and just say,
"Yes," as one throws a copper, and she goes away happy.
* * * * * *
My respect for life is so strong that I feel pity for a fly which I have killed. Observing the tiny corpse at the gigantic height of my eyes, I cannot help thinking how well made that organized speck of dust is, whose wings are little more than two drops of space, whose eye has four thousand facets; and that fly occupies my thought for a moment, which is a long time for it.
* * * * * *
CHAPTER XXII
LIGHT
I am leaning this evening out of the open window. As in bygone nights, I am watching the dark pictures, invisible at first, taking shape—the steeple towering out of the hollow, and broadly lighted against the hill; the castle, that rich crown of masonry; and then the massive sloping black of the chimney-peopled roofs, which are sharply outlined against the paler black of space, and some milky, watching windows. The eye is lost in all directions among the desolation where the multitude of men and women are hiding, as always and as everywhere.