Over the bronze of his skin there stole a shade of grey. My own feeling of enticement grew--the desire to go out into the moonlight, to leave my kind and wander blindly through the desert, to see the gorges in their shining silver, and taste the keenness of the cool, sharp air. Further than this with me it did not go, but that my companion felt the bigger, deeper draw behind this surface glamour, I have no reasonable doubt. For a moment, indeed, I thought he meant to leave the table; he had half risen in his chair; it seemed he struggled and resisted--and then his big frame subsided again; he sat back; he looked, in the attitude his body took, less impressive, smaller, actually shrunken into the proportions of some minuter scale. It was as though something in that second had been drawn out of him, decreasing even his physical appearance. The voice, when he spoke presently with a touch of resignation, held a lifeless quality as though deprived of virile timbre.
‘It’s always there,’ he whispered, half collapsing back into his chair, ‘it’s always watching, waiting, listening. Almost like a monster of the fables, isn’t it? It makes no movement of its own, you see. It’s far too strong for that. It just hangs there, half in the air and half upon the earth--a gigantic web. Its prey flies into it. That’s Egypt all over. D’you feel like that too, or does it seem to you just imaginative rubbish? To me it seems that she just waits her time; she gets you quicker that way; in the end you’re bound to go.’
‘There’s power certainly,’ I said after a moment’s pause to collect my wits, my distress increased by the morbidness of his simile. ‘For some minds there may be a kind of terror too--for weak temperaments that are all imagination.’ My thoughts were scattered, and I could not readily find good words. ‘There is startling grandeur in a sight like that, for instance,’ and I pointed to the window. ‘You feel drawn--as if you simply _had_ to go.’ My mind still buzzed with his curious words, ‘In the end you’re bound to go.’ It betrayed his heart and soul. ‘I suppose a fly does feel drawn,’ I added, ‘or a moth to the destroying flame. Or is it just unconscious on their part?’
He jerked his big head significantly. ‘Well, well,’ he answered, ‘but the fly isn’t necessarily weak, or the moth misguided. Over-adventurous, perhaps, yet both obedient to the laws of their respective beings. They get warnings too--only, when the moth wants to know too much, the fire stops it. Both flame and spider enrich themselves by understanding the natures of their prey; and fly and moth return again and again until this is accomplished.’