Finally they departed: not all, for there were some that would not go, held by some magical attractive force.
Truly a strange result! The moths collected where there was apparently nothing to attract them, and remained there, unpersuaded by the sense of sight; they passed the bell-glass actually containing the female without halting for a moment, although she must have been seen by many of the moths both going and coming.

Maddened by a lure, they paid no attention to the reality.
What was the lure that so deceived them?
All the preceding night and all the morning the female had remained under the wire-gauze cover; sometimes clinging to the wire-work, sometimes resting on the sand in the tray.

Whatever she touched--above all, apparently, with her distended abdomen--was impregnated, as a result of long contact, with a certain emanation.

This was her lure, her love-philtre; this it was that revolutionised the Oak Eggar world.

The sand retained it for some time and diffused the effluvium in turn.
They passed by the glass prison in which the female was then confined and hastened to the meshes of wire and the sand on which the magic philtre had been poured; they crowded round the deserted chamber where nothing of the magician remained but the odorous testimony of her sojourn.
The irresistible philtre requires time for its elaboration.