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But the flowers! ah, the flowers! she was friends with them from the very first. What wonderful creatures they were!–and so kind and beautiful–always sending out such colours and such scents–red scent, and white scent, and yellow scent–for the other creatures! The one that was invisible and everywhere, took such a quantity of their scents, and carried it away! yet they did not seem to mind. It was their talk, to show they were alive, and not painted like those on the walls of her rooms, and on the carpets.

She wandered along down the garden until she reached the river. Unable then to get any further–for she was a little afraid, and justly, of the swift watery serpent–she dropped on the grassy bank, dipped her feet in the water, and felt it running and pushing against them. For a long time she sat thus, and her bliss seemed complete, as she gazed at the river, and watched the broken picture of the great lamp overhead, moving up one side of the roof, to go down the other.

CHAPTER XIII.

SOMETHING QUITE NEW.

A beautiful moth brushed across the great blue eyes of Nycteris. She sprang to her feet to follow it–not in the spirit of the hunter, but of the lover. Her heart–like every heart, if only its fallen sides were cleared away–was an inexhaustible fountain of love: she loved everything she saw. But as she followed the moth, she caught sight of something lying on the bank of the river, and not yet having learned to be afraid of anything, ran straight to see what it was. Reaching it, she stood amazed. Another girl like herself! But what a strange-looking girl!–so curiously dressed too!–and not able to move! Was she dead? Filled suddenly with pity, she sat down, lifted Photogen’s head, laid it on her lap, and began stroking his face. Her warm hands brought him to himself. He opened his black eyes, out of which had gone all the fire, and looked up with a strange sound of fear, half moan, half gasp. But when he saw her face, he drew a deep breath, and lay motionless–gazing at her: those blue marvels above him, like a better sky, seemed to side with courage and assuage his terror. At length, in a trembling, awed voice, and a half whisper, he said, “Who are you?”

“I am Nycteris,” she answered.

“You are a creature of the darkness, and love the night,” he said, his fear beginning to move again.

“I may be a creature of the darkness,” she replied. “I hardly know what you mean. But I do not love the night. I love the day–with all my heart; and I sleep all the night long.”

“How can that be?” said Photogen, rising on his elbow, but dropping his head on her lap again the moment he saw the moon; “–how can it be,” he repeated, “when I see your eyes there–wide awake?”

She only smiled and stroked him, for she did not understand him, and thought he did not know what he was saying.

“Was it a dream then?” resumed Photogen, rubbing his eyes. But with that his memory came clear, and he shuddered, and cried, “Oh horrible! horrible! to be turned all at once into a coward! a shameful, contemptible, disgraceful coward! I am ashamed–ashamed–and so frightened! It is all so frightful!”

“What is so frightful?” asked Nycteris, with a smile like that of a mother to her child waked from a bad dream.

“All, all,” he answered; “all this darkness and the roaring.”

“My dear,” said Nycteris, “there is no roaring. How sensitive you must be! What you hear is only the walking of the water, and the running about of the sweetest of all the creatures. She is invisible, and I call her Everywhere, for she goes through all the other creatures and comforts them. Now she is amusing herself, and them too, with shaking them and kissing them, and blowing in their faces. Listen: do you call that roaring? You should hear her when she is rather angry though! I don’t know why, but she is sometimes, and then she does roar a little.”