rew aside his plain gray cloak and showed me his lovely underwings,
that he's like some people--people you'd think were very common, you
know. You couldn't be expected to know what was underneath, could you?
So you pass them by, thinking how ordinary, and matter of fact, and
uninteresting and even ugly they are, and you feel rather sorry for
them--because you don't know. But if you can once get close enough to
touch them--why, then you find out!" Her eyes grew deeper, and
brighter, as they do when she is moved; and the color came more
vividly to her cheek. "Don't you reckon," said she naively, "that
plenty of folks are like him? They're the sad color of the
street-dust, of course, for things do borrow from their surroundings,
didn't you know that? That's called protective mimicry, the Padre
says. So you only think of the dust-colored outside--and all the while
the underwings are right there, waiting for you to find them! Isn't it
wonderful and beautiful? And the best of all is, it's true!"

The cripple in the chair put out his hand with a hint of timidity in
his manner; he was staring at Mary Virginia as if some of the light
within her had dimly penetrated his grosser substance.

"Could I hold it--for a minute--in my own hand?" he asked, turning
brick-red.

"Of course you may," said Mary Virginia pleasantly. "I see by the
Padre's face this isn't a rare moth--he's been here all along, only my
eyes have just been opened to him. I don't want him to go in any
collection. I don't want him to go anywhere, except back into the
air--I owe him that for what he taught me. So I'm sure the Padre won't
mind, if you'd like to set him free, yourself."

She put the moth on the man's finger, delicately, for a Catocala is a
swift-winged little chap; it spread out its wings splendidly, as if to
show him its loveliness; then, darting upward, vanished into the cool
green depth of the shrubbery.

"I remember running after a butterfly once, when I was a kid," said
he. "He came flying down our street, Lord knows where from, or why,
and I caught him after a chase. I thought he was the prettiest thing
ever my eyes had seen, and I wanted the worst way in the world to keep
him with me. A brown fellow he was, all sprinkled over with little
splotches of silver, as if there'd been plenty of the stuff on hand,
and it'd been laid on him thick. But after awhile I got to thinking
he'd feel like he was in jail, shut up in my hot fist. I couldn't bear