opera to-night," the man said to another man, as he took the young
tea rose.

"What is the opera?" asked the mother rose wearily of the
butterfly. He did not know; but his cousin the death's-head moth,
asleep under a magnolia leaf, looked down with a grim smile on his
quaint face.

"It is where everything dies in ten seconds," he answered. "It is
a circle of fire; many friends of mine have flown in, none ever
returned: your daughter will shrivel up and perish miserably. One
pays for glory."

The rose tree shivered through all her stalks; but she was still
proud, and tried to think that all this was said only out of envy.
What should an old death's-head moth know, whose eyes were so weak
that a farthing rushlight blinded them?

So she lifted herself a little higher, and would not even see that
the Banksiae were nodding to her; and as for her old friend the
blackbird, how vulgar he looked, bobbing up and down hunting worms
and woodlice! could anything be more outrageously vulgar than
that staring yellow beak of his? She twisted herself round not to
see him, and felt quite annoyed that he went on and sang just the
same, unconscious of, or indifferent to, her coldness.

With each successive summer Rosa Damascena became more integrally
and absolutely a Rosa Indica, and suffered in proportion to her
fashion and fame.