Shortly after Sidney’s arrival Mabella departed, having enjoyed her visit greatly, and Lanty and she spent an hour that evening listening to Dorothy, as, with lisping baby tongue and inadequate vocabulary, she endeavoured to describe how Sally had blackened her face with blacklead to amuse her.
That night Sidney sat alone in his study; his shuttered window was open, and, between the slats, the moths and tiny flying creatures of the night came flitting in. Soon his student lamp was nimbused by a circle of fluttering wings. Now and then an unusually loud hum distracted his attention from the loose-paged manuscripts before him, and he laid them down to rescue some moth, which, allured too near the light, had come within dangerous proximity to the flame.
These poor, half-scorched creatures he sent fluttering forth into the night again, yet, in spite of this, several lay dead upon the green baize below the student lamp; others walked busily about in the circle of light cast by the lamp-shade upon the table, and presently he put aside all pretence of work and watched them with curious kindly eyes.
His heart, that great tender heart which was for ever bleeding for others, whilst its own grievous wound was all unhealed, went out even to these aimless creatures of a day.
Surely some leaven of the divine Eternal Pity wrought in the clay of this man’s humanity, making it quick with a higher life than that breathed by his nostrils.
“Not a moth with vain desire Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire, Or but subserves another’s gain,”
he said to himself, and then before his watching eyes there seemed to be mimicked forth all the brave-hearted struggle of humanity towards the light, which, alas! too often scorched and blasted those nearest to it. Well, was it better, he wondered, to have endured and known the full radiance for an instant, even if the moment after the wings were folded for ever, or was it wiser to be content upon the dimmer plane as those little creatures were who ran about the table-top instead of striving upward to the light? But happily, as he looked at these latter ones, his attention was diverted from the more painful problem, as his eyes, always delicately sensitive to the beauty of little things, dwelt with delight upon the exquisite, fragile little creatures.