CHAPTER V. NYCTERIS.
Five or six months after the birth of Photogen, the dark lady alsogave birth to a baby: in the windowless tomb of a blind mother, in thedead of night, under the feeble rays of a lamp in an alabaster globe,a girl came into the darkness with a wail. And just as she was bornfor the first time, Vesper was born for the second, and passed into aworld as unknown to her as this was to her child--who would have to beborn yet again before she could see her mother.
Watho called her Nycteris, and she grew as like Vesper as possible--inall but one particular. She had the same dark skin, dark eyelashes andbrows, dark hair, and gentle sad look; but she had just the eyes ofAurora, the mother of Photogen, and if they grew darker as she grewolder, it was only a darker blue. Watho, with the help of Falca, tookthe greatest possible care of her--in every way consistent with herplans, that is,--the main point in which was that she should never seeany light but what came from the lamp. Hence her optic nerves, andindeed her whole apparatus for seeing, grew both larger and moresensitive; her eyes, indeed, stopped short only of being too large.Under her dark hair and forehead and eyebrows, they looked like twobreaks in a cloudy night-sky, through which peeped the heaven wherethe stars and no clouds live. She was a sadly dainty little creature.No one in the world except those two was aware of the being of thelittle bat. Watho trained her to sleep during the day, and wake duringthe night. She taught her music, in which she was herself aproficient, and taught her scarcely anything else.