Watho having given orders, took it for granted they were obeyed, and
that Falca was all night long with Nycteris, whose day it was. But Falca
could not get into the habit of sleeping through the day, and would
often leave her alone half the night. Then it seemed to Nycteris that
the white lamp was watching over her. As it was never permitted to go
out--while she was awake at least--Nycteris, except by shutting her
eyes, knew less about darkness than she did about light. Also, the lamp
being fixed high overhead, and in the centre of everything, she did not
know much about shadows either. The few there were fell almost entirely
on the floor, or kept like mice about the foot of the walls.
Once, when she was thus alone, there came the noise of a far-off
rumbling: she had never before heard a sound of which she did not know
the origin, and here, therefore, was a new sign of something beyond
these chambers. Then came a trembling, then a shaking; the lamp dropped
from the ceiling to the floor with a great crash, and she felt as if
both her eyes were hard shut and both her hands over them. She concluded
that it was the darkness that had made the rumbling and the shaking, and
rushing into the room, had thrown down the lamp. She sat trembling. The
noise and the shaking ceased, but the light did not return. The darkness
had eaten it up!
Her lamp gone, the desire at once awoke to get out of her prison. She
scarcely knew what out meant; out of one room into another, where there
was not even a dividing door, only an open arch, was all she knew of the
world. But suddenly she remembered that she had heard Falca speak of the
lamp _going out_: this must be what she had meant. And if the lamp had
gone out, where had it gone? Surely where Falca went, and like her it
would come again. But she could not wait. The desire to go out grew
irresistible. She must follow her beautiful lamp! She must find it! She
must see what it was about!
Now there was a curtain covering a recess in the wall, where some of her
toys and gymnastic things were kept; and from behind that curtain Watho
and Falca always appeared, and behind it they vanished. How they came
out of solid wall, she had not an idea; all up to the wall was open
space, and all beyond it seemed wall; but clearly the first and only
thing she could do was to feel her way behind the curtain. It was so
dark that a cat could not have caught the largest of mice. Nycteris
could see better than any cat, but now her great eyes were not of the
smallest use to her. As she went she trod upon a piece of the broken
lamp. She had never worn shoes or stockings, and the fragment, though,
being of soft alabaster, it did not cut, yet hurt her foot. She did not
know what it was, but, as it had not been there before the darkness
came, she suspected that it had to do with the lamp. She knelt,
therefore, and searched with her hands, and bringing two large pieces
together, recognized the shape of the lamp. Therewith it flashed upon
her that the lamp was dead, that this brokenness was the death of which
she had read without understanding, that the darkness had killed the
lamp. What, then, could Falca have meant when she spoke of the lamp
_going out_? There was the lamp--dead, indeed, and so changed that she
would never have taken it for a lamp but for the shape. No, it was not
the lamp any more now it was dead, for all that made it a lamp was gone,
namely, the bright shining of it. Then it must be the shine, the light,
that had gone out! That must be what Falca meant--and it must be
somewhere in the other place in the wall. She started afresh after it,
and groped her way to the curtain.
Now she had never in her life tried to get out, and did not know how;
but instinctively she began to move her hands about over one of the
walls behind the curtain, half expecting them to go into it, as she
supposed Watho and Falca did. But the wall repelled her with inexorable
hardness, and she turned to the one opposite. In so doing she set her
foot upon an ivory die, and as it met sharply the same spot the broken
alabaster had already hurt, she fell forward with her outstretched hands
against the wall. Something gave way, and she tumbled out of the cavern.