She had a little story to tell me; how, deep in the shadows of the orchard, she had been watching a green and purple insect crawl from a hole in a tree to a stone, under which it vanished; and when she turned the stone over with a stick a thousand strange things wriggled away. "It taught me something! it taught me something!" she cried.
I asked her what.
"I said to myself," she answered gravely, "that green and purple insect is a lie, and I who follow it am the world; for its colours please me and I can't help pursuing it. And the stone it has crept under is corruption, where a thousand other falsehoods, some pretty and some very ugly, lie hid; and when I turn it over, I am like a reformer, who floods corruption with the blaze of heaven, and all the foul things rush from the light of truth. Is not that pretty, Arthur?"
"Yes, dearest; but do you know what your little fable typifies?"
"What?"
"The Reformation. You were Luther, the stone was Rome, the wriggling insects the priests."
"No, no! There never was a Reformation; there was a wicked schism."
"Well, don't let us argue," I said, with a cheerless laugh.
She had descended the stairs with me, forgetting the purpose for which she had mounted them. The harshness of my laugh struck her.
"What is the matter, Arthur?"