Antony had loved these things since
he was a child,--dragonflies with their lamp-like eyes of luminous horn,
moths with pall-like wings that filled the world with silence as you
looked at them, sleepy as death--loved them with the passion of a
Japanese artist who delights to carve them on quaint nuggets of metal.
Perhaps it was that they were so like words--words to which he had given
all the love and worship of his life. Surely he had loved Silencieux[1]
more since he had found for her that beautiful name.
He held the beetle in his hand a long while, loving it. Then he said to
himself, with a smile in which was the delight of a success: "A
vase-shaped beetle with deer's horns."
The phrase delighted him. He set the insect down on the path, tenderly.
He had done with it. He had carved it in seven words. The little model
might now touch its delicate way among the ferns at peace.
"A vase-shaped beetle with deer's horns," he repeated as he walked on,
and then the gathering gloom of the wood suggested an addition: "And
some day I shall find in the wood that moth of which I have dreamed
since childhood--the dark moth with the face of death between his
wings.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25