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At such times, were I to close my eyes, I should say to myself, 'What weary old man is thus venting his spleen against the ambition which has failed, and the love which has forsaken him? Outwardly the very personation of youth, and revelling like a butterfly in the warmth of the sun and the tints of the herbage, why have you none of the golden passions of the young, their bright dreams of some impossible love, their sublime enthusiasm for some unattainable glory?
And the little music keeps tinkling downstairs. A butterfly of sound in the night. Like a miniature of all living. Ah, I'm growing sentimental. Sitting holding hands with the sea. She was sad when I left her. What of it? Von Stinnes. Dear friend! No sadness there. He was right. New phrases, graceful emotions. What an artist! But Warren couldn't write the story.
And there, just by the old mossy root, is a superb tuft of primroses, with a yellow butterfly hovering over them, like a flower floating on the air. What happiness to sit on this tufty knoll, and fill my basket with the blossoms! What a renewal of heart and mind! To inhabit such a scene of peace and sweetness is again to be fearless, gay, and gentle as a child.
She now opened it, and, with a remark about looking for the report of her yesterday's lecture at the Butterfly Club, directed her gaze at the front page, on which she hoped that an editor with the best interests of the public at heart had decided to place her. Mr. McCall, jumping up and down behind his glasses, scrutinised her face closely as she began to read.
And I fell into a half-revery, in which the hailmarys wove themselves in and out, like threads in a pattern. Dreamily enough, I heard the youthful guests depart, in a gale of laughter and flute-like goodnights. And I noted, too, that no light as yet shone in the Butterfly Man's rooms. Well he would hurl himself into the work to-morrow, probably, and clear it up in an hour or two. He was like that.
He heard church bells, he caught at butterflies, he tumbled in new-mown hay, he wandered in a tropic garden. But in the hay a wasp stung him, and the butterfly changed to a curling black snake that struck at him and glided to a dark-flowing river full of floating ice, and up from the river a white hand was thrust, and it beckoned him beckoned him.
"Never mind, fellows," interposed Frank; "for my part, I am glad the Butterfly had it all to herself. She has just come out, and it will be a feather in her cap." "But we saved the chaise," said Charles. "We pulled it ashore; it was safe enough where it was. The Butterfly saved the lives of the man and woman, and of the horse. They would have drowned, and all the glory consisted in saving them.
Hilary, beneath the acacia-tree not yet in bloom, marked an early butterfly flitting over the geraniums blossoming round an old sundial. Blackbirds were holding evensong; the late perfume of the lilac came stealing forth into air faintly smeeched with chimney smoke.
He smiled on me in quite a superior sort of way, such a smile as would have become the face of Malvolio, as he answered me, "The fly, my dear sir, has one striking feature. It's wings are typical of the aerial powers of the psychic faculties. The ancients did well when they typified the soul as a butterfly!"
He, I know, has thought so too for I have not been able to resist letting him pour out his hopes and fears to me now and then. I could not refuse either him or myself that indulgence, because" Mrs. Frayling rose, and, bending over our much tried and now positively flabbergasted damsel, brushed her hair with a butterfly kiss. "Because my own hopes were also not a little engaged," she said.
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