Contact with the industrial problem had let a few practical ideas into the Butterfly’s once airy head. Therefore she was concerned about the financial future of her friend. Still, she did not comprehend the situation in its tragic entirety. A prop of some kind had ever been near for her to lean on in dire extremity. Fate provides props for those who are not strong enough to stand alone; but the great souls are placed where there is nothing to lean against, that they may both keep and show their strength. They suffer; their hearts often bleed; but they stand.
Then, too, Chrissalyn looked upon her friend as a person of such incomparable ability, that she could overcome any obstacle, however formidable. “How I shall miss you, Cartice,” she said, huskily. “How lonely and bereft I shall be.”
“You have your admirers, your moths.”
“My moths? Yes, my miserable moths,” said Chrissalyn, contemptuously. “They are about as much comfort to me, as so many of the genuine insects. I am a proof of evolution. I have evolved too far to find them interesting. But where are the men? Do they not exist outside of novels any more? For a long time I cherished dreams of meeting one whom I could love without being ashamed of myself, but I am giving them up. Sometimes, where I hear of friends marrying, it all sounds so fine that I am quite envious until I see their husbands, and then I am better contented.”
For Cartice the pain of parting from her friend was intensified by the knowledge that it meant loss of opportunity to talk with her beloved unseen people. The Butterfly was a telephone to the other world whose like might never be met again.
They spent the last evening together. Their invisible friends understood what was determined upon, without any telling. Prescott was asked if he had any suggestions to make in regard to Cartice’s plans.
“It is not for us to direct you,” he said. “You must steer your own bark. That is the business of life. The field is wide, and you have your place therein and will find it. Don’t be discouraged. We shall be often with you, and shall keep an eye on you.”
The evening was one long to be remembered by the two who were so soon to be separated, tinged as it was with the melancholy that colors all last occasions.
The final glimpse Cartice had of the place that had been to her a city of sorrow as well as of light, showed her the Butterfly waving a loving and tearful adieu. Dear Butterfly! Was there ever so charming a combination of vanity, love of pleasure, earthly prettiness and goddess-like ability to do wondrous things?
Cartice settled herself for her journey, feeling somewhat as a soul might who had just issued from one very difficult and wretched incarnation and knew that in a few hours it must begin another, which in all probability would prove more difficult and more wretched.