Maryette.
She had been writing in the deserted café. Now she took a candle and went slowly up[pg 278]stairs. On the white plaster wall of her bedroom was a Death's Head moth.
The girl, startled for an instant, stood still; an unfeigned shiver of displeasure passed over her. Not that the Death's Head was an unfamiliar or terrifying sight to her; in late summer she usually saw one or two which had flown through some lighted window.
But it was the amorous history of this creature which the student Karl had related that now repelled her. This night creature with the skull on its neck, once scarcely noticed, had now become a trifle repulsive.
She went nearer, lifting the lighted candle. The thing crouched there with slanted wings. It was newly hatched, its sleek body still wet with the humors of incubation—wet as a soaked mouse. Its abdomen, too, seemed enormous, all swelled and distended with unfertilized eggs. No, there could be no question concerning the sex of the thing; this was a female, and her tumefied body was almost bursting with eggs.
In startling design the yellow skull stood out; the ribs of the skeleton. Two tiny, fiery[pg 279] eyes glimmered at the base of the antennæ—two minute jewelled sparks of glowing, lambent fire. They seemed to be watching her, maliciously askance.
The very horrid part of it was that, if touched, the creature would cry out. The girl knew this, hesitated, looked at the open window through which it must have crawled, and sat down on her bed to consider the situation.
"After all," she said to herself resolutely. "God made it. It is harmless. If God thought fit to paint one of his lesser creatures like a skeleton, perhaps it was to remind us that life is brief and that we should lose no time to live it nobly in His sight.... I think that perhaps explains it."
However, she did not undress.
"I am quite foolish to be afraid of this poor moth. I repeat that I am foolish. Allez—I am not afraid. I am no longer afraid. I—I admire this handiwork of God."