"Ah, mademoiselle! To study them. To breed from them the moth. The Death's Head is magnificent."
"God made it," admitted the girl with a faint shudder, "but I am afraid I could not love it. When do they hatch out?"
"It is time now. It is not like others of the sphinx family. Incubation requires but a few weeks. These are nearly ready to emerge, mademoiselle."[pg 273]
"Oh. And then what do they do?"
"They mate."
She was silent.
"The males seek the females," he said in his pedantic, monotonous voice. "And so ardent are the lovers that although there be no female moth within five, eight, perhaps ten miles, yet will her lover surely search through the night for her and find her."
Maryette shuddered again in spite of herself. The thought of this creature marked with the emblems of death and possessed of ardour, too, was distasteful.
"Amour macabre—what an unpleasant thought, Karl. I do not care for your Death's Head and for the history of their amours."
She turned and gently laid her head on her father's knees. The young man regarded her with a pallid sneer.