The girl watched him, fascinated. He scrambled over to the tumbler, tested it with heavy antennæ; then, ardent and impatient, beat against the glass with muscular wings that clattered in the silence.
But it was not the amorous fury of the creature striking the tumbler with resounding wings, not the glowing eyes, the strong, clawed feet, the Death's Head staring from its fune[pg 286]real black thorax that held the girl's attention. It was something else; something entirely different riveted her eyes on the creature.
For the cigar-shaped body, instead of bearing the naked ribs of a skeleton, was snow white.
And now she began to understand. Somebody had already caught the moth, had wrapped around its body a cylinder of white tissue paper—tied it on with a fine, white silk thread.
The moth was very still now, exploring the interstices between tumbler and table with heavy, pectinated antennæ.
Cautiously Maryette bent forward and dropped both hands on the moth.
Instantly the creature cried out horribly; it was like a mouse between her shrinking fingers; but she slipped the cylinder of tissue paper from its abdomen and released it with a shiver; and it darted and whizzed around the room, gyrating in whistling circles around her head until, unnerved, she struck at it again and again with empty hands, following, driv[pg 287]ing it toward the open window, out of which it suddenly darted.
But now there was another Death's Head in the room, a burly, headlong, infatuated male which drove headlong at the tumbler and clung to it, slipping, sliding, filling the room with a feathery tattoo of wings.
It, also, had a snow-white body; and before she had seized the squeaking thing and had slipped the tissue wrapper from its body, another Death's Head whirred through the window; then another, then two; then others. The room swarmed; they were crawling all over the tumbler, the table, the bed. The room was filled with the soft, velvety roar of whirring wings beating on wall and ceiling and against the tumbler where Madam Death sat imprisoned, quivering her wings, her eyes two molten rubies, and the ghastly skull staring from her back.
How Maryette ever brought herself to do it; how she did it at last, she had no very clear idea. The touch of the slippery, mousy bodies was fearsomely repugnant to her; the very sight of the great, skull-bearing things began[pg 288] to sicken her physically. A dreadful, almost impalpable floss from their handled wings and bodies smeared her hands; the place vibrated with their tiny goblin cries.