"After all," she said to herself resolutely. "God made it. It is harmless. If God thought fit to paint one of his lesser creatures like a skeleton, perhaps it was to remind us that life is brief and that we should lose no time to live it nobly in His sight.... I think that perhaps explains it." However, she did not undress. "I am quite foolish to be afraid of this poor moth. I repeat that I am foolish. _Allez_--I am _not_ afraid. I am no longer afraid. I--I admire this handiwork of God." She sat looking at the creature, her hands lying clasped in her lap. "It’s a very odd thing," she said to herself, "that a lover can find this creature even if he be miles and miles away.... Maybe he’s on his way now----" Instinctively she sprang up and closed her bedroom window. "No," she said, looking severely at the motionless moth, "you shall have no visitors in my room. You may remain here; I shall not disturb you; and tomorrow you will go away of your own accord. But I cannot permit you to receive company----" A heavy fall on the floor above checked her. Breathless, listening, she crept to her door. "Karl!" she called. Listening again, she could hear distant and vaguely dreadful sounds from the gardener-student’s room above. She was frightened but she went up. The youth had had a bad hemorrhage. She sat beside him late into the night. After his breathing grew quieter, sitting there in silence she could hear odd sounds, rustling, squeaking sounds from the box of Death’s Head chrysalids on the night table beside his bed. The pupæ of the Death’s Head were making merry in anticipation of the rapidly approaching change--the Great Adventure of their lives--the coming metamorphosis. The youth lay asleep now. As she extinguished the candle and stole from the room, all the pupæ of the Death’s Head began to squeak in the darkness. ------------------ The student-gardener could do no more work for the present. He lay propped up in bed, pasty, scarlet lipped, and he seemed bald and lidless, so colourless were hair and eye-lashes. "Can I do anything for you, Karl?" asked Maryette, coming in for a moment as usual in the intervals of her many duties. "The ink, if you would be so condescending--and a pen," he said, watching her out of hollow, sallow eyes of watery blue. She fetched both from the café. She came again in another hour, knocking at his door, but he said rather sharply that he wished to sleep. Scarcely noticing the querulous tone, she departed. She had much to do besides her duties in the belfry. Her father was an invalid who required constant care; there was only one servant, an old peasant woman who cooked. The Government required her father to keep open the White Doe Tavern, and there was always a little business from the scanty garrison of Sainte Lesse, always a few meals to get, a few drinks to serve, and nobody now to do it except herself.