In the poem "Pale Fire" we find hints about
Shakespeare's ( and Will's) influence about Shade's choice of a title for his
poem and an image of the moon as "an arrant thief".
But I found another source that might help us add
another meaning where the idea of "thief" comes close to another: "a
seducer" (& perhaps, "a mime").
In "Nabokov's Butterflies"
chapter "Father's Butterflies" ( Allen Lane, The Penguin
Press,2000): we find, on page 209:
"at the smallest lapse in the watchfulness of the
powers guarding nature's mysteries, the thief's light of Father's lamp
would snatch out of the dewy chaos of the steppe grasses some little
fishlike, perhaps siminocturnal larva"
Here the thief's light is not the moon's ....
A little further we have the "seducer" on page 211:
"...darted like lightning from place to place... so
that the only chance of catching it ( light fails to lure it)
was to take advantage of the split second...
In "Ada", we find russet-haired and skinned
Lucette, with the color constantly associated with her ( and her watchful
jealous green eyes) in the inverted "isabella" insect:
212: a point under some Castilian pines before the
first isabella ( sitting on a stump, green with russet
eyespots)..."