very glory essential to the being of poor girls born and bred in
caverns. It was a resurrection--nay, a birth itself, to Nycteris. What
the vast blue sky, studded with tiny sparks like the heads of diamond
nails, could be; what the moon, looking so absolutely content with
light.--why, she knew less about them than you and I! but the greatest
of astronomers might envy the rapture of such a first impression at
the age of sixteen. Immeasurably imperfect it was, but false the
impression could not be, for she saw with the eyes made for seeing,
and saw indeed what many men are too wise to see.

As she knelt, something softly flapped her, embraced her, stroked her,
fondled her. She rose to her feet, but saw nothing, did not know what
it was. It was likest a woman's breath. For she know nothing of the
air even, had never breathed the still newborn freshness of the world.
Her breath had come to her only through long passages and spirals in
the rock. Still less did she know of the air alive with motion--of
that thrice blessed thing, the wind of a summer night. It was like a
spiritual wine, filling her whole being with an intoxication of purest
joy. To breathe was a perfect existence. It seemed to her the light
itself she drew into her lungs. Possessed by the power of the gorgeous
night, she seemed at one and the same moment annihilated and
glorified.

She was in the open passage or gallery that ran round the top of the
garden walls, between the cleft battlements, but she did not once look
down to see what lay beneath. Her soul was drawn to the vault above
her, with its lamp and its endless room. At last she burst into tears,
and her heart was relieved, as the night itself is relieved by its
lightning and rain.