e seemed at one and the same moment annihilated and glorified.

She was in the open passage or gallery that ran round the top of the
garden walls, between the cleft battlements, but she did not once look
down to see what lay beneath. Her soul was drawn to the vault above her,
with its lamp and its endless room. At last she burst into tears, and
her heart was relieved, as the night itself is relieved by its lightning
and rain.

And now she grew thoughtful. She must hoard this splendor. What a little
ignorance her jailers had made of her! Life was a mighty bliss, and they
had scraped hers to the bare bone. They must not know that she knew. She
must hide her knowledge--hide it even from her own eyes, keeping it
close in her bosom, content to know that she had it, even when she could
not brood on its presence, feasting her eyes with its glory. She turned
from the vision, therefore, with a sigh of utter bliss, and with soft
quiet steps and groping hands stole back into the darkness of the rock.
What was darkness or the laziness of Time's feet to one who had seen
what she had that night seen? She was lifted above all weariness, above
all wrong.

When Falca entered, she uttered a cry of terror. But Nycteris called to
her not to be afraid, and told her how there had come a rumbling and a
shaking, and the lamp had fallen. 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. For now, prisoner as she knew herself, her heart was full of glory
and gladness; at times she had to hold herself from jumping up and going
dancing and singing about the room. When she slept, instead of dull
dreams, she had splendid visions. There were times, it is true, when she
became restless, and impatient to look upon her riches, but then she
would reason with herself, saying, "What does it matter if I sit here
for ages with my poor pale lamp, when out there a lamp is burning at
which ten thousand little lamps are glowing with wonder?"

She never doubted she had looked upon the day and the sun, of which she
had read; and always when she read of the day and the sun, she had the
night and the moon in her mind; and when she read of the night and the
moon, she thought only of the cave and the lamp that hung there.

X.--THE GREAT LAMP.

[Illustration: "NYCTE