On a fair morning in May, as the dawn crept up out of the east not many hours after midnight, Eleanore rose, in the early flush, and, clothing herself lightly, left her room with the intention of going into the fields to walk. No one was to be seen as she entered the lower hall; but, to her amazement, the great door stood half open, and through it poured a draught of morning air, rich with the perfume of blossoming trees and fertile fields. Wondering that Alixe should have risen so early, Eleanore left the Castle and hurried out of the courtyard into the strip of meadow lying between the wall and the dry moat. Here, near the north edge of the cliff, sitting cross-legged in the grass, sat David the dwarf, holding in his hand something to which he talked in a low, solemn tone. Advancing noiselessly toward him, Eleanore perceived that it was a dead butterfly that he had found, and to which he was pouring out his soul. Amazed at the first phrases that caught her ears, she halted a few steps behind him, and there learned something of the thoughts that lay hidden in his volatile brain. “White Butterfly, White Butterfly, thou frail and delicate child of summer, speak to me again! Say, hast thou found death as fair as life, thou White and Still? Came the messenger to thee unawares, or didst thou see his face and know it? Wast thou confessed, White Butterfly? Wentest thou forth absolved of all thy fluttering sins? “Say, wanderer, didst love thy life? Wast afraid or sorrowful to leave it, in its dawn? Or foundest thou comfort in the thought of eternal rest for thy battling wings? “And I, O living Thistledown, teach me my way! Shall I follow thee into the great world, to roam there seeking why men love to live? Or shall I also, like thee, leave it all? Shall I go, knowing nothing of the joy of life? Or, again, shall I practise a weary courtesy, and remain to bring echoes of laughter into that Twilight Castle, for the sake of the love I bear its Twilight Lady? Her life, my flutterer, hath been such a dream of tears as even thou and I, dead thing, have never known. Yea, many a time while I laughed and shouted at the light crew of damsels that sleep there now, my heart hath bled for her. O Ghost of the Morning, know you what Eleanore, our lady, thinks of me, the fool? And yet, yet I do so deeply pity her—” “Thou pityest me, David?” echoed Eleanore, advancing till she stood before him, forgetful of how her appearance must startle him. David looked up at her, winking slowly, like one that would bring himself out of a dream-world into reality. “Lady of Twilight, thou’rt a woman, lonely and mournful, forsaken of thy children. Therefore I grieve for thee,” he said slowly, gazing at her with his big eyes, but not rising from where he sat.