weak to read. He might perhaps
like to look at pictures.

The doctor opened the book at an attractive illustration of an immense
butterfly, with wings of iridescent blue and green. He could not stay,
but he left the cherished volume open on Michael's knee.

Michael turned his maimed mind slowly from the abyss into which it had
been looking ever since he had seen that sprig of sea lavender.

Yes. He knew that particular butterfly. He had seen them by thousands
once in a field in Corfu, long ago on an Easter holiday, when he had
been abroad with Wentworth. They had all glinted together in the
sunshine, wheeling together, sinking together, rising together like an
army of fairies.

How heavy the book was on his knee.

He had not the energy to turn another page. Yes, he must. The doctor
would be disappointed if he found the book open at the same place when
he came back. One leaf. Come! He owed it to his friend. Just one leaf.

Were there English butterflies here as well?

Yes. Here was a sheet of them.

He knew that little yellow one with red tips to its wings. It was common
enough in the south of England.

He looked idly at it.

And somewhere out of the past, far, far back from behind the crystal
screen of childhood, came a memory clear as a raindrop.

He remembered as a tiny child lying in the sun watching a butterfly like
that; watching it walk up and down on a twig of whortleberry, opening
and shutting its new-born wings. It was the first time he had noticed
how beautiful a butterfly's wings were. His baby hand went out towards
it. The baby creature did not fly, was not ready to fly. He grasped it,
and laughed as he felt it flutter, tickling his hot little palms, closed
over it. It gave him a new sense of power. Then he slowly pulled off its
wings, one by one, because they were so pretty.

He remembered it as if it were yesterday, and the sudden disgust and
almost fear with which he suddenly tossed away the little mutilated ugly
thing with struggling legs.

The cruelty of it filled him even now with shamed pain.

"It was not I who did it," he said to himself "I did not understand."

And a bandage was removed from his eyes, and he looked down, as we look
into still water, and he saw that Fay did not understand either. She had
put out her hand to take him. She had pulled his wings off him. She had
cast him aside. Perhaps she even felt horror of him now. But
nevertheless she had not done it on purpose, an