I walked home alone in the early winter twilight.
There was no one in the parlour except the Butterfly Hunter, who was sitting by a western window, with a sheet of sketches from his specimens lying on his knee.
It was too dark to see clearly any longer. The old scientist had forgotten his drawings, and was watching one great star in an orange patch of sky between two dark lines of cloud.
“It is strange,” he said, half to himself, half to me, as I seated myself in an easy chair, “that truth, the least truth, is so hard to find. We buy it dearly, and with long effort, and then we do not understand the whole of it.”
He rose and brought his pictures to me.
“I have been studying that little creature,” he said, “for forty years, and yet I know nothing of the beginning or of the end of its life. It begins in mystery; it ends in mystery.”
CHAPTER XVIII
I collected for Mrs. Ebstein a wardrobe of tiny garments. Some of them were Jean’s outgrown clothing. Some of them I made myself, sitting alone in my study in the early winter evenings.
It was almost Christmas time when I took them down to Snow Street. I too climbed the long flights of stairs, and passed through the noisy room where the seven children lived.
I found Mrs. Ebstein in her room alone. When I opened my bag and gave her its contents, her face shone. She grasped both my hands and gave me a great kiss.