CHAPTER VII.
HOW NYCTERIS GREW.
The little education she intended Nycteris to have, Watho gave her by
word of mouth. Not meaning she should have light enough to read by, to
leave other reasons unmentioned, she never put a book in her hands.
Nycteris, however, saw so much better than Watho imagined, that the
light she gave her was quite sufficient, and she managed to coax Falca
into teaching her the letters, after which she taught herself to read,
and Falca now and then brought her a child's book. But her chief
pleasure was in her instrument. Her very fingers loved it, and would
wander about over its keys like feeding sheep. She was not unhappy.
She knew nothing of the world except the tomb in which she dwelt, and
had some pleasure in everything she did. But she desired,
nevertheless, something more or different. She did not know what it
was, and the nearest she could come to expressing it to herself
was--that she wanted more room. Watho and Falca would go from her
beyond the shine of the lamp, and come again; therefore surely there
must be more room somewhere. As often as she was left alone, she would
fall to poring over the coloured bas-reliefs on the walls. These were
intended to represent various of the powers of Nature under
allegorical similitudes, and as nothing can be made that does not
belong to the general scheme, she could not fail at least to imagine a
flicker of relationship between some of them, and thus a shadow of the
reality of things found its way to her.
There was one thing, however, which moved and taught her more than all
the rest--the lamp, namely, that hung from the ceiling, which she
always saw alight, though she never saw the flame, only the slight
condensation towards the centre of the alabaster globe. And besides
the operation of the light itself after its kind, the indefiniteness
of the globe, and the softness of the light, giving her the feeling as
if her eyes could go in and into its whiteness, were somehow also
associated with the idea of space and room. She would sit for an hour
together gazing up at the lamp, and her heart would swell as she
gazed. 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.
