So, as it is cruel to kill the birds, and as they are not nearly so beautiful when they are dead as they are when they are alive, and as the world is full of tender-hearted women to love them and plead for them and to say, "Do not kill them," perhaps you will wonder why it is that they are killed. I will tell you how it has come about. When Dame Nature had imagined all her beautiful birds, and then cut them out of that wonderful stuff of hers--the stuff of life--with her marvellous pair of scissors, she said to her eldest daughter--whose name is Truth--"Now I will leave them and go away for a little, for there are other places where I must imagine things and cut them out with my scissors." Truth said, "Do not leave the birds, for there are men in the world with hard hearts and a film over their eyes. They will see the birds, but not their beauty, because of the film, and they will kill them because of their hearts, which are like marble or rock or stone." "They are, it is true," said Dame Nature, "and indeed it was of some such material that I cut them out. I had my reasons, but you would never understand them, so I shall not tell you what they were. But there are not only my men in the world; there are my women too. I cut _them_ out of something very different. It was soft and yielding, and that part that went to make the heart was like water--like soft water. I made them, too, to have influence over the men, and I put no film over _their_ eyes. _They_ will see how beautiful my birds are, and they will know that they are more beautiful alive than dead. And because of this and their soft hearts they will not kill them, and to the men they will say, 'Do not kill them,' and my beautiful birds will live. Women will spare them because they have pity, and men because women ask them to. And to make it still more certain, see yonder on that hill sits the Goddess of Pity. She has come from heaven to help me, and has promised to stay till I return. It is from her that pity goes into all those hearts that have it, and because she is a goddess, she sends most of it into the hearts of women. Have no fear, then, for until the Goddess of Pity falls asleep my birds are safe." "But _may_ she not fall asleep?" said Truth. But Dame Nature had hurried away with her scissors, and was out of hearing.