butterfly by the dusty roadside of his duty which might yield a moment
of joy. But when he knew that, whether he wished it or not, he must lie
here many weeks before he could fight again, the sense that he was
sacrificing duty to pleasure disappeared, and he let himself enjoy his
nearness to the girl and let his poetic spirit revel in her fragile
beauty without further thought of the duty which lay in wait for him.
That, he finally decided, would attend to itself. A soldier is not long
permitted to forget his duty.

But, the thing which continued to stir and puzzle him most was the fancy
which now and then came, that he might have this wonderful creature
precisely like the butterfly he had thought her. Indeed, he could
scarcely get away from the impression that there were times when she
offered herself to him. Yet though he was not very learned concerning
women himself, he knew that there was only one sort who offered herself
to a man. Sometimes her little timorous darings let him believe, for a
moment, that she was of this kind. But nearly always the idea was
quenched out by some act of such utter innocency as could not be
mistaken for coquetry. Still the recurrence of an idea, originally
erroneous, is likely to be strengthened by each repetition. And this was
what was happening to the sick soldier.

Nevertheless he continued to fancy that of all the spirits, from the
moon-goddess down, none were so dainty, so fragile, so tender,
caressing, and altogether lovely as this Hoshiko, who was not a spirit
at all, even though she was there, day after day, at his bedside,
suggesting herself to him with either the abandon of a child or the
intention of a woman of joy. Had he been as wise about women as he was
simple, and she as wise about men as she pretended, who had no wisdom at
all concerning them, such a misunderstanding would not have occurred.

For she was not offering herself to him at all. She was a child with a
toy. And at first the subtraction of this toy, even though the like and
fascination of it exceeded any other she had ever had, would have
portended little of tragedy. But later it was more serious. Something
inside which had never stirred before began to stir now. This contact
with a man, these intimacies with one not much more learned in the art
of loving than she, had awakened the sleeping thing within which would
one day be her womanhood.

As for her, one must not forget that at the last she wished to be