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His coloured wings were rather tight, like the Sunflower's glory leaves, but he was wide awake watching the candle. I should have got back to bed quicker if it had not been for Margery's black cat and the night-moths. I wanted to get the cat into the house again, but she would not follow me, and the moths would; and I had such hard work to keep them out of the Rushlight.
Within our tents, where I went to lie down for a short time, overcome with fatigue, numberless night-moths were fluttering about, and suddenly I could see brilliant flashes circling around, now disappearing, now returning, caused by a covey of fire-flies which had entered, and could not for some time find the means of escape. At length the tent was left once more in darkness.
At the end of a singularly unprofitable day, Aurora sat in the red and green room with all the windows open to the sweet airs and odors of May, and no lamp lighted that might attract night-moths, or, worse, the thirsty, ferocious Florentine zanzara. She just sat, not doing a thing. Estelle after a while left her, to retire to her own quarters, close the windows and make a light.
They make me think, I know not why, of great rare insects; the extraordinary patterns on their garments have something of the dark motley of night-moths.
The rest of us stood looking on, one of us at least feeling rather sick at the sight, and all of us as useless as the night-moths which came out from the trees and fluttered round the lamp. At last, when all was done, and the injured man could be moved, there rose up a hitherto unnoticed fellow who had been supporting him, and I recognized one of our village labourers.
Up in the high-walled garden of the great house on the hill, the night-moths have spread their broad, soft wings, and are flitting among the flowers, and the little girl with the small feet lies on her silken bed, half asleep. She, too, thinks of the lake and the lilies, but she knows nothing about Pen-se, who lives down upon the river. See, the sun has gone from them.
But as we have necessity to leave this spot before the hour when the oak-leaves change into night-moths, one of your amiable stories will be the utmost we can strengthen our intellects with. Select which you will. In the meantime, food will be brought to refresh you after your benevolent exertions in conversing with a person of my vapid understanding.
The outlines of the rocks and of the ruined castle looked threatening, alarming. The pale light of the lamp before the shrine and of Lucrezia's votive candle drew to them not only the fluttering night-moths, but the spirits of desolation and of hollow grief that dwell among the waste places and among the hills.
The mice and the shrews crept safely over the toes of the blackberry bushes, the rabbits came tumbling along through banks of inanimate grass. And fat night-moths sucked honey from half-conscious flowers, and the same moths whirred duskily round our gathered roses or darted daringly into our faces. We were like the flowers and the grass and the blackberry and blackthorn.
A passion and rapture of song, the last evening song of the birds, was being poured out on the still dewy air all round us. One by one the songsters grew tired and ceased as a pale star grew visible here and there in the transparent sky, and complete silence fell on the garden. Only a bat flitted across it silently now and then, and the white night-moths came and played by us.
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