clicked and whirred. 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.