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Methodically, without haste, he drew it out, chose one white pellet, and, holding it between his bony thumb and forefinger, listened. Yes, somebody was coming up the stairs, very careful to make no sound. Well there were various ways for a Death’s Head Hussar to die for his War Lord. All were equally laudable.
Patiently, during the previous year, he had worked it out had proved his theory by a series of experiments with moths of this species. He had arranged with his staff comrade, Dr. Glück, for a forced hatching of the pupæ which the latter had patiently bred from the enormous green and violet-banded caterpillars. At least one female Death’s Head must be ready, caged in the trenches beyond Nivelle.
It was the first suitor arrived from outer darkness a big, powerful Death’s Head moth with eyes aglow, the yellow skull displayed in startling contrast on his velvet-black body. The girl watched him, fascinated. He scrambled over to the tumbler, tested it with heavy antennæ; then, ardent and impatient, beat against the glass with muscular wings that clattered in the silence.
N-no, I thank you " His voice became urbane with an apparent effort. "Thank you for inquiring " "I heard your window open " she said. "Thank you. I am quite well. The air is mild and grateful.... I thank mademoiselle for her solicitude." She returned to her room and lighted her candle. On the white plaster wall sat the Death’s Head moth. She had not been in her room all day.
“Ha, ha! to be sure!” returned Jucundus; “to be sure! yet why shouldn’t he worship a handsome Greek girl as well as any of those mummies and death’s heads and bogies of his, which I should blush to put up here alongside even of Anubis, or a scarabæus?” “Mother thinks she is not altogether the girl you take her for,” said his nephew.
But now there was another Death’s Head in the room, a burly, headlong, infatuated male which drove headlong at the tumbler and clung to it, slipping, sliding, filling the room with a feathery tattoo of wings.
It, also, had a snow-white body; and before she had seized the squeaking thing and had slipped the tissue wrapper from its body, another Death’s Head whirred through the window; then another, then two; then others. The room swarmed; they were crawling all over the tumbler, the table, the bed.
"It was because of his wonderful experiments with the Great Peacock moth and with others of the genus that I have studied to acquaint myself concerning the amours of the Death’s Head. And I have discovered that he will find the female even if she be miles and miles away."
After his breathing grew quieter, sitting there in silence she could hear odd sounds, rustling, squeaking sounds from the box of Death’s Head chrysalids on the night table beside his bed. The pupæ of the Death’s Head were making merry in anticipation of the rapidly approaching change the Great Adventure of their lives the coming metamorphosis. The youth lay asleep now.
But it was not the amorous fury of the creature striking the tumbler with resounding wings, not the glowing eyes, the strong, clawed feet, the Death’s Head staring from its funereal black thorax that held the girl’s attention. It was something else; something entirely different riveted her eyes on the creature.
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