"My mother," said he.
They had paused in their stroll, and were leaning over the parapet above the railway line. After a few moments' silence he added, with a faint smile:—
"That's why I try hard to keep myself human—so that, if a woman should ever care for me, I shouldn't hurt her."
A green caterpillar was crawling on his sleeve. In his vague manner he picked it tenderly off and laid it on the leaf of an aloe that grew in the terrace vase near which he stood.
"You couldn't even hurt that crawling thing—let alone a woman," said Zora. This time very softly.
He blushed. "If you kill a caterpillar you kill a butterfly," he said apologetically.
"And if you kill a woman?"
"Is there anything higher?" said he.
She made no reply, her misanthropical philosophy prompting none. There was rather a long silence, which he broke by asking her if she read Persian. He excused his knowledge of it by saying that it kept him human. She laughed and suggested a continuance of their stroll. He talked disconnectedly as they walked up and down.
The crowd on the terrace thinned as the hour of déjeuner approached. Presently she proclaimed her hunger. He murmured that it must be near dinner time. She protested. He passed his hands across his eyes and confessed that he had got mixed up in his meals the last few days. Then an idea struck him.