m FOUNTAIN ‘OF IVORY THREADS 209 
If you have forgotten, then you must look back for 
it, because I should not explain it better here than I do 
there, and, besides, it would be twice over. Well, 
these feathers are made in the same way, only they 
are of a pure, shining white—like all the rest of this 
bird’s plumage—and although they are as soft as silk 
they are stiff at the same time, and so smooth that 
they look like the delicate flakings from a piece of 
beautiful, pure, polished ivory. Imagine a little 
fountain of ivory threads all shooting up together 
into the air, quite straight at first, and then bending 
over and drooping down in the most delicate, graceful 
way imaginable. That is what a plume of those 
feathers looks like, when they have been taken out and 
tied together, but I wish, myself, that they did not 
look nearly so beautiful, for it is because of those beauti- 
ful plumes, that the poor bird is being killed and killed 
and becoming scarcer and scarcer, every day. For the 
women whose hearts the little demon has frozen, wear 
these plumes in their hats and in their hair, and they 
are called “‘ospreys,” and are very fashionable indeed. 
Soldiers, too, used to wear them in their caps, 
but ‘hey have given up doing so. It is only the 
frozen-hearted women who are killing the poor 
White Egrets now—but ah, there are so many of 
them (the women I mean, not the Egrets). I have 
sat at the entrance of a large concert-hall, and counted 
O 
