I was standing with her, for a breath of air, on the balcony outside the drawing-room windows which faced the park. She had just made a great curtsey to a slip of the moon that rose above the trees and had borrowed a shilling of me in order to turn it. “No, I can’t swear that I believe in moon-luck,” she said, “but after all it does no harm, and, in case it’s true, you can’t afford to make an enemy of her. Ah, what’s that?” A thrush, attracted by the lights inside, had flown between us, dashed itself against the window, and now lay fluttering on the ground at our feet. Instantly she was all pity and tenderness. She picked up the bird, examined it, and found that its wing was broken. “Ah, poor thing!” she said. “Look, its wing-bone is snapped; the end protrudes. And how terrified it is! What are we to do?” It was clear that the kindest thing to do would be to put the bird out of its pain, but when I suggested that, she took a step back from me, and covered it with her other hand. Her eyes gleamed, her mouth smiled, and I saw the tip of her tongue swiftly pass over her lips as if licking them. “No, that would be a terrible thing to do,” she said. “I shall take it home with me ever so carefully, and watch over it. I am afraid it is badly hurt. But it may live.” Suddenly--perhaps it was that swift licking of her lips that suggested the thought to me--I felt instinctively that she was not so much pitiful as pleased. She stood there with eyes fixed on it, as it feebly struggled in her hands. And then her face clouded; over its brightness there came a look of displeasure, of annoyance. “I’m afraid it is dying,” she said. “Its poor frightened eyes are closing.” The bird fluttered once more, then its legs stretched themselves stiffly out, and it lay still. She tossed it out of her hands on to the paved balcony, with a little shrug of her shoulders. “What a fuss over a bird,” she said. “It was silly of it to fly against the glass. But I have too soft a heart; I cannot bear that the poor creatures should die. Let us go in and have one more romp. Oh, here is your shilling; I hope it will have brought me good luck. And then I must get home. My husband--do you know him?--always sits up till I get back, and he will scold me for being so late!” There, then, was my first meeting with her, and there, too, were the spikes of the poisonous plant pushing up among the magnificence of her roses. And yet, so I thought to myself then, and so I think to myself now, I perhaps was utterly wrong about it all, in thus attributing to her a secret glee of which she was wholly incapable. So, with a certain effort I wiped the impression I had received off my mind, determining to consider myself quite mistaken. But, involuntarily, my mind as if to justify itself in having delineated such a picture, proceeded to delineate another.