into one. Oh, I love them so! I could sit looking at them all day, the
darlings!"

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 to-day,
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.