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Updated: May 2, 2025
"They are far more beautiful are they not? than any of the colours upon your walls. And then they are alive, and smell so sweet!" He wished she would not make him keep opening his eyes to look at things he could not see; and every other moment would start and grasp tight hold of her, as some fresh pang of terror shot into him. "Come, come, dear!" said Nycteris; "you must not go on this way.
If the firefly had gone on shining, Nycteris would have seen the stair turn, and would have gone up to Watho's bedroom; whereas now, feeling straight before her, she came to a latched door, which after a good deal of trying she managed to open and stood in a maze of wondering perplexity, awe, and delight. What was it? Was it outside of her, or something taking place in her head?
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. 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.
She would wonder what had hurt her, when she found her face wet with tears, and then would wonder how she could have been hurt without knowing it. She never looked thus at the lamp except when she was alone. Watho having given orders, took it for granted they were obeyed, and that Falca was all night long with Nycteris, whose day it was.
The next moment, however, came a great gladness a firefly, which had wandered in from the garden. She saw the tiny spark in the distance. With slow pulsing ebb and throb of light, it came pushing itself through the air, drawing nearer and nearer, with that motion which more resembles swimming than flying, and the light seemed the source of its own motion. "My lamp! my lamp!" cried Nycteris.
But alas! perhaps the sun had killed her melted her burned her up! dried her up that was it, if she was the nymph of the river! From that dreadful morning Nycteris had never got to be herself again.
He set Nycteris down under a tree, in the black shadow of its bole, strung his bow, and picked out his heaviest, longest, sharpest arrow. Just as he set the notch on the string, he saw that the creature was a tremendous wolf, rushing straight at him.
Then Falca went and told her mistress, and within an hour a new globe hung in the place of the old one. Nycteris thought it did not look so bright and clear as the former, but she made no lamentation over the change; she was far too rich to heed 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. "How did you come here?" asked Nycteris, taking his face between her hands. "Down the hill," he answered.
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.
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