She could not tell whether she was upon her
feet or drifting about like the fire-fly, driven by the pulses of an
inward bliss. But she knew little as yet of her inheritance.
Unconsciously she took one step forward from the threshold, and the girl
who had been from her very birth a troglodyte stood in the ravishing
glory of a Southern night, lit by a perfect moon--not the moon of our
Northern clime, but a moon like silver glowing in a furnace--a moon one
could see to be a globe--not far off, a mere flat disk on the face of
the blue, but hanging down half way, and looking as if one could see all
round it by a mere bending of the neck.

"It is my lamp!" she said, and stood dumb with parted lips. She looked
and felt as if she had been standing there in silent ecstasy from the
beginning.

"No, it is not my lamp," she said, after a while; "it is the mother of
all the lamps."

And with that she fell on her knees, and spread out her hands to the
moon. She could not in the least have told what was in her mind, but the
action was in reality just a begging of the moon to be what she
was--that precise incredible splendor hung in the far-off roof, that
very glory essential to the being of poor girls born and bred in
caverns. It was a resurrection--nay, a birth itself--to Nycteris. What
the vast blue sky, studded with tiny sparks like the heads of diamond
nails, could be; what the moon, looking so absolutely content with
light--why, she knew less about them than you and I! but the greatest of
astronomers might envy the rapture of such a first impression at the age
of sixteen. Immeasurably imperfect it was, but false the impression
could not be, for she saw with the eyes made for seeing, and saw indeed
what many men are too wise to see.

As she knelt, something softly flapped her, embraced her, stroked her,
fondled her. She rose to her feet, but saw nothing, did not know what it
was. It was likest a woman's breath. For she knew nothing of the air
even, had never breathed the still new-born freshness of the world. Her
breath had come to her only through long passages and spirals in the
rock. Still less did she know of the air alive with motion--of that
thrice blessed thing, the wind of a summer night. It was like a
spiritual wine, filling her whole being with an intoxication of purest
joy. To breathe was a perfect existence. It seemed to her the light
itself she drew into her lungs. Possessed by the power of the gorgeous
night, sh