"That," she said faintly, "is the part I don't care for. . . . Is he out of all pain? . . . What? Didn't feel any? Oh, are you quite sure?"
She walked over to him and looked down at the beautiful victim of craft.
"Oh, well," she sighed, "you are very clever, of course, and I suppose I'll eat him; but I wish he were alive again, down there in those cool, sweet depths."
"Killing frogs and insects and his smaller brother fish?"
"Did he do that?"
"No doubt of it. And if I hadn't landed him, a heron or a mink would have done it sooner or later. That's what a trout is for: to kill and be killed."
She smiled, then sighed. The taking of life and the giving of it were mysteries to her. She had never wittingly killed anything.
"Do you say that it doesn't hurt the trout?" she asked.
"There are no nerves in the jaw muscles of a trout—Hah!" as his rod twitched and swerved under water and his reel sang again.