Although Nycteris took care not to stay out long at a time, and used
every precaution, she could hardly have escaped discovery so long, had
it not been that the strange attacks to which Watho was subject had been
more frequent of late, and had at last settled into an illness which
kept her to her bed. But whether from an access of caution, or from
suspicion, Falca, having now to be much with her mistress both day and
night, took it at length into her head to fasten the door as often as
she went out by her usual place of exit; so that one night, when
Nycteris pushed, she found, to her surprise and dismay, that the wall
pushed her again, and would not let her through; nor with all her
searching could she discover wherein lay the cause of the change. Then
first she felt the pressure of her prison walls, and turning, half in
despair, groped her way to the picture where she had once seen Falca
disappear. There she soon found the spot by pressing upon which the wall
yielded. It let her through into a sort of cellar, where was a glimmer
of light from a sky whose blue was paled by the moon. From the cellar
she got into a long passage, into which the moon was shining, and came
to a door. She managed to open it, and, to her great joy, found herself
in _the other place_, not on the top of the wall, however, but in the
garden she had longed to enter. Noiseless as a fluffy moth she flitted
away into the covert of the trees and shrubs, her bare feet welcomed by
the softest of carpets, which, by the very touch, her feet knew to be
alive, whence it came that it was so sweet and friendly to them. A soft
little wind was out among the trees, running now here, now there, like a
child that had got its will. She went dancing over the grass, looking
behind her at her shadow as she went. At first she had taken it for a
little black creature that made game of her, but when she perceived that
it was only where she kept the moon away, and that every tree, however
great and grand a creature, had also one of these strange attendants,
she soon learned not to mind it, and by-and-by it became the source of
as much amusement to her as to any kitten its tail. It was long before
she was quite at home with the trees, however. At one time they seemed
to disapprove of her; at another, not even to know she was there, and to
be altogether taken up with their own business. Suddenly, as she went
from one to another of them, looking up with awe at the murmuring
mystery of their branches and leaves, she spied one a little way off
which was very different from all the rest. It was white, and dark, and
sparkling, and spread like a palm--a small slender palm, without much
head; and it grew very fast, and sang as it grew. But it never grew any
bigger, for just as fast as she could see it growing, it kept falling to
pieces. When she got close to it, she discovered it was a water
tree--made of just such water as she washed with, only it was alive, of
course, like the river--a different sort of water from that, doubtless,
seeing the one crept swiftly along the floor, and the other shot
straight up, and fell, and swallowed itself, and rose again. She put her
feet into the marble basin, which was the flower-pot in which it grew.
It was full of real water, living and cool--so nice, for the night was
hot.
But the flowers! ah, the flowers! she was friends with them from the
very first. What wonderful creatures they were!--and so kind and
beautiful--always sending out such colors and such scents--red scent,
and white scent, and yellow scent--for the other creatures! The one that
was invisible and everywhere took such a quantity of their scents, and
carried it away! yet they did not seem to mind. It was their talk, to
show they were alive, and not painted like those on the walls of her
rooms, and on the carpets.
She wandered along down the garden until she reached the river. Unable
then to get any further--for she was a little afraid, and justly, of the
swift watery serpent--she dropped on the grassy bank, dipped her feet in
the water, and felt it running and pushing against them. For a long time
she sat thus, and her bliss seemed complete, as she gazed at the river,
and watched the broken picture of the great lamp overhead, moving up one
side of the roof to go down the other.