Leaning from the window, he looked down[pg 297] at the frantic moth, perplexed, a little uneasy now.
"Swine!" he muttered. "What, then, ails you that you do not fly to the mistress awaiting you over yonder?"
He could see the cylinder of white tissue shining on the creature's body, where it fluttered against the pane, illuminated by the rays of the candle from within the young girl's room.
Could it be possible that the candle-light was proving the greater attraction?
Even as the possibility entered his mind, he saw another Death's Head dart at the window below and join the first one. But this newcomer wore no tissue jacket.
Then, out of the darkness the Death's Heads began to come to the window below, swarms of them, startling him with the racket of their wings.
From where did they arrive? They could not be the moths he liberated. But.... Were they? Had some accident robbed their bodies of the tissue missives? Had they blundered into somebody's room and been robbed?[pg 298]
Mystified, uneasy, he hung over his window sill, staring with sickening eyes at the winged tumult below.
With patient, plodding logic he began to seek for the solution. What attracted these moths to the room below? Was it the candle-light? That alone could not be sufficient—could not contend with the more imperious attraction, the subtle effluvia stealing out of the north and appealing to the ruling passion which animated the frantic winged things below him.
Patiently, methodically in his mind he probed about for some clue to the solution. The ruling passion animating the feathery whirlwind below was the necessity for mating and perpetuating the species.