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."

"It is so horribly dark!" said Photogen, who, listening while she
spoke, had satisfied himself that there was no roaring.

"Dark!" she echoed. "You should be in my room when an earthquake has
killed my lamp. I do not understand. How _can_ you call this dark? Let
me see: yes, you have eyes, and big ones, bigger than Madam Watho's or
Falca's--not so big as mine, I fancy--only I never saw mine. But
then--oh yes!--I know now what is the matter! You can't see with them
because they are so black. Darkness can't see, of course. Never mind:
I will be your eyes, and teach you to see. Look here--at these lovely
white things in the grass, with red sharp points all folded together