She was heavy with eggs, and made no attempt to fly, so I closed the box and left her until the lights were out, and then removed the lid.  Every opening was tightly screened, and as she had mated, I did not think she would fly.  I hoped in the freedom of the Cabin she would not break her wings, and ruin herself for a study.

There was much comfort in the thought that I could secure her likeness; her eggs would be fertile, and I could raise a brood the coming season, in which would be both male and female.  When life was over I could add her to my specimen case, for these are of the moths that do not eat, and live only a few days after depositing their eggs.  So I went out and explained to Mr. Pettis what efforts I had made to secure this yellow moth, comforted him for allowing the male to escape by telling him I could raise all I wanted from the eggs of the female, showed him my entire collection, and sent him from the Cabin such a friend to my work, that it was he who brought me an oil-coated lark a few days later.

On rising early the next morning, I found my moth had deposited some eggs on the dining-room floor, before the conservatory doors, more on the heavy tapestry that covered them, and she was clinging to a velvet curtain at a library window, liberally dotting it with eggs, almost as yellow as her body.  I turned a tumbler over those on the floor, pinned folds in the curtains, and as soon as the light was good, set up a camera and focused on a suitable location.

She climbed on my finger when it was held before her, and was carried, with no effort to fly, to the place I had selected, though Molly-Cotton walked close with a spread net, ready for the slightest impulse toward movement.  But female moths seldom fly until they have finished egg depositing, and this one was transferred with no trouble to the spot on which I had focused.  On the back wall of the Cabin, among some wild roses, she was placed on a log, and immediately raised her wings, and started for the shade of the vines.  The picture made of her as she walked is beautiful.  After I had secured several studies she was returned to the library curtain, where she resumed egg placing.  These were not counted, but there, were at least three hundred at a rough guess.

I had thought her lovely in gas light, but day brought forth marvels and wonders.  When a child, I used to gather cowslips in a bed of lush swale, beside a little creek at the foot of a big hill on our farm.  At the summit was an old orchard, and in a brush-heap a brown thrush nested.  From a red winter pearmain the singer poured out his own heart in song, and then reproduced the love ecstasy of every other bird of the orchard.  That moth’s wings were so exactly the warm though delicate yellow of the flowers I loved, that as I looked at it I could feel my bare feet sinking in the damp ooze, smell the fragrance of the buttercups, and hear again the ripple of the water and the mating exultation of the brown thrush.