, is the
basis of all morality? Surely to love our neighbour as ourself."

They set the world right together and their thoughts drifted into a
region of benignant aspirations. Then came Jenny and presently the
detective followed her into a garden of flowers behind Villa
Pianezzo.

"Giuseppe and Mr. Brendon have gone to the hills," she said. "And
now I am ready to talk to you, Mr. Ganns. Don't fear to hurt me. I
am beyond hurting. I have suffered more in the past year than I
should have thought it possible to suffer and keep sane."

He looked at her beautiful face intently. It was certainly sad
enough, but to his eye, beneath the lines of sorrow, lay an anxiety
that concerned neither the past nor the future, but the immediate
present. She was apparently unhappy in her new life.

"Show me the silkworms," he said.

They entered the lofty shed rising above a thicket behind the
villa--a shuttered apartment where twilight reigned. The place was
fitted with shelves to the ceiling and between the caterpillar trays
tall branches of brushwood ascended to the roof. Out of the cool
gloom of this silent chamber there glimmered, as it seemed, a
thousand little lamps dotted everywhere on the sticks and walls and
ceiling. Not a place where a worm could climb or spin was
unadorned, for the oval, shining cocoons, scattered like small, ripe
fruit upon the twigs, made a delicate light on every side through
the sombre dusk. Mr. Redmayne's silkworms were descended, through
countless generations, from those historic eggs stolen by Nestorian
pilgrims from China, and carried thence secretly in hollow canes to
Constantinople some thirteen hundred years before.

The caterpillars had nearly all done their work and completed their
silken cases; but a couple of hundred, fat, white monsters, each
some three inches long, still remained in the trays, and they
fastened greedily on fresh mulberry leaves that Jenny brought them.
Others were but beginning their shrouds. They had sketched them and
appeared to be busily weaving in the preliminary bag made of
transparent and glittering filament. A few of the creatures began to
turn yellow, though as yet they had not devoured their last meal.
Jenny picked them up and held them to the morning light.

"Never mummy was wound so exquisitely as the silkworm's chrysalis,"
said Peter; and Jenny chatted cheerfully about the silken industry
and its varied interests, but found that Mr. Ganns could tell her
muc