Photogen looked close at the flowers, and thought he had seen something like them before, but could not make them out. As Nycteris had never seen an open daisy, so had he never seen a closed one.
Thus instinctively Nycteris tried to turn him away from his fear; and the beautiful creature’s strange lovely talk helped not a little to make him forget it.
“You call it dark!” she said again, as if she could not get rid of the absurdity of the idea; “why, I could count every blade of the green hair—I suppose it is what the books call grass—within two yards of me! And just look at the great lamp! It is brighter than usual today, and I can’t think why you should be frightened, or call it dark!”
As she spoke, she went on stroking his cheeks and hair, and trying to comfort him. But oh how miserable he was! and how plainly he looked it! He was on the point of saying that her great lamp was dreadful to him, looking like a witch, walking in the sleep of death; but he was not so ignorant as Nycteris, and knew even in the moonlight that she was a woman, though he had never seen one so young or so lovely before; and while she comforted his fear, her presence made him the more ashamed of it. Besides, not knowing her nature, he might annoy her, and make her leave him to his misery. He lay still therefore, hardly daring to move: all the little life he had seemed to come from her, and if he were to move, she might move; and if she were to leave him, he must weep like a child.
“How did you come here?” asked Nycteris, taking his face between her hands.
“Down the hill,” he answered.
“Where do you sleep?” she asked.
He signed in the direction of the house. She gave a little laugh of delight.
“When you have learned not to be frightened, you will always be wanting to come out with me,” she said.
She thought with herself she would ask her presently, when she had come to herself a little, how she had made her escape, for she must, of course, like herself have got out of a cave, in which Watho and Falca had been keeping her.
“Look at the lovely colours,” she went on, pointing to a rosebush, on which Photogen could not see a single flower. “They are far more beautiful—are they not?—than any of the colours upon your walls. And then they are alive, and smell so sweet!”
He wished she would not make him keep opening his eyes to look at things he could not see; and every other moment would start and grasp tight hold of her, as some fresh pang of terror shot into him.
“Come, come, dear!” said Nycteris; “you must not go on this way. You must be a brave girl, and—”
“A girl!” shouted Photogen, and started to his feet in wrath. “If you were a man, I should kill you.”
“A man?” repeated Nycteris: “what is that? How could I be that? We are both girls—are we not?”
“No, I am not a girl,” he answered; “—although,” he added, changing his tone, and casting himself on the ground at her feet, “I have given you too good reason to call me one.”
“Oh, I see!” returned Nycteris. “No, of course! you can’t be a girl: girls are not afraid—without reason. I understand now: it is because you are not a girl that you are so frightened.”
Photogen twisted and writhed upon the grass.
“No, it is not,” he said sulkily; “it is this horrible darkness that creeps into me, goes all through me, into the very marrow of my bones—that is what makes me behave like a girl. If only the sun would rise!”
“The sun! what is it?” cried Nycteris, now in her turn conceiving a vague fear.
Then Photogen broke into a rhapsody, in which he vainly sought to forget his.
“It is the soul, the life, the heart, the glory of the universe,” he said. “The worlds dance like motes in his beams. The heart of man is strong and brave in his light, and when it departs his courage grows from him—goes with the sun, and he becomes such as you see me now.”
“Then that is not the sun?” said Nycteris, thoughtfully, pointing up to the moon.
“That!” cried Photogen, with utter scorn; “I know nothing about that, except that it is ugly and horrible. At best it can be only the ghost of a dead sun. Yes, that is it! That is what makes it look so frightful.”
“No,” said Nycteris, after a long, thoughtful pause; “you must be wrong there. I think the sun is the ghost of a dead moon, and that is how he is so much more splendid as you say.—Is there, then, another big room, where the sun lives in the roof?”
“I do not know what you mean,” replied Photogen. “But you mean to be kind, I know, though you should not call a poor fellow in the dark a girl. If you will let me lie here, with my head in your lap, I should like to sleep. Will you watch me, and take care of me?”
“Yes, that I will,” answered Nycteris, forgetting all her own danger.
So Photogen fell asleep.
XIV
The Sun
There Nycteris sat, and there the youth lay, all
