It caused the death of the most perfect woman in the world." He looked dreamily into the blue ether between sea and sky.

Zora felt strangely drawn to him.
"Who was it ?" she asked softly.
"My mother," said he.
They had paused in their stroll, and were leaning over the parapet above the railway line.

After a few moments' silence he added, with a faint smile:-- "That's why I try hard to keep myself human--so that, if a woman should ever care for me, I shouldn't hurt her." A green caterpillar was crawling on his sleeve.

In his vague manner he picked it tenderly off and laid it on the leaf of an aloe that grew in the terrace vase near which he stood.
"You couldn't even hurt that crawling thing--let alone a woman," said Zora.
This time very softly.
He blushed.

"If you kill a caterpillar you kill a butterfly," he said apologetically.
"And if you kill a woman ?" "Is there anything higher ?" said he.
She made no reply, her misanthropical philosophy prompting none.