bear more of it than any dark-blooded African. In the hottest of every
day, she stript him and laid him in it, that he might ripen like a
peach; and the boy rejoiced in it, and would resist being dressed
again. She brought all her knowledge to bear on making his muscles
strong and elastic and swiftly responsive--that his soul, she said
laughing, might sit in every fibre, be all in every part, and awake
the moment of call. His hair was of the red gold, but his eyes grew
darker as he grew, until they were as black as Vesper's. He was the
merriest of creatures, always laughing, always loving, for a moment
raging, then laughing afresh. Watho called him Photogen.




CHAPTER V.

NYCTERIS.


Five or six months after the birth of Photogen, the dark lady also
gave birth to a baby: in the windowless tomb of a blind mother, in the
dead of night, under the feeble rays of a lamp in an alabaster globe,
a girl came into the darkness with a wail. And just as she was born
for the first time, Vesper was born for the second, and passed into a
world as unknown to her as this was to her child--who would have to be
born yet again before she could see her mother.

Watho called her Nycteris, and she grew as like Vesper as possible--in
all but one particular. She had the same dark skin, dark eyelashes and
brows, dark hair, and gentle sad look; but she had just the eyes of