There came to listening me something of the emotion I experienced when I said my first Mass—­as if I had been brought so close to our Father that I could have put out my hand and touched Him.  Ah!  I had had a very small part to play in this man’s redemption.  I knew it now, and felt humbled and abashed, and yet grateful that even so much had been allowed me.  Not I, but Love, had transformed a sinner and an outlaw into a great scientist and a greater lover.  And I remembered Mary Virginia’s childish hand putting into his the gray-winged Catocala, and how the little moth, raising the sad-colored wings worn to suit his surroundings, revealed beneath that disfiguring and disguising cloak the exquisite and flower-like loveliness of the underwings.

He paused in his swinging stride, and looked down at me a bit shyly.

“Parson—­you see how it is with me?”

“I see.  And I think she is the greater lady for it and you the finer gentleman,” said I stoutly.  “It would honor her, if she were ten times what she is—­and she is Mary Virginia.”

“She is Mary Virginia,” said the Butterfly Man, “and I am—­what I am.  Yet somehow I feel sure I can care for her, that I can go right on caring for her to the end of time, without hurt to her or sorrow to me.”  And after a pause, he added, deliberately: 

“I found something better than a package of letters to-night, parson.  I found—­Me.”

For awhile neither of us spoke.  Then he said, speculatively: 

“Folks give all sorts of things to the church—­dedicate them in gratitude for favors they fancy they’ve received, don’t they?  Lamps, and models of ships, and glass eyes and wax toes and leather hands, and crutches and braces, and that sort of plunder?  Well, I’m moved to make a free-will offering myself.  I’m going to give the church my kit, and you can take it from me the old Lady will never get her clamps on another set like that until Gabriel blows his trumpet in the morning.  Parson, I want you to put those tools back where you had them, for I shall never touch them again.  I couldn’t.  They—­well, they’re sort of holy from now on.  They’re my IOU.  Will you do it for me?”

“Yes!” said I.

“I might have known you would!” said he, smiling.  “Just one more favor, parson—­may I put her letters in her hands, myself?”

“My son, my son, who but you should do that?” I pushed the package across the table.

“Great Scott, parson, here it is striking five o’clock, and you’ve been up all night!” he exclaimed, anxiously.  “Here—­no more gassing.  You come lie down on my bed and snooze a bit.  I’ll call you in plenty of time for mass.”

I was far too spent and tired to move across the garden to the Parish House.  I suffered myself to be put to bed like a child, and had my reward by falling almost immediately into a dreamless sleep, nor did I stir until he called me, a couple of hours later.  He himself had not slept, but had employed the time in going through the letters open on his table.  He pointed to them now, with a grim smile.